Reme
Personally found this very informative, as someone considering taking the steps to towards becoming CTO at my company I had a lot of questions that I did not know I had, this book helped me a lot with that.
The early chapters give nice details on what the general description of the role is and while not all of it would be directly applicable to me, the information itself was more than valuable enough for me to make what I feel is an informed decision, I was able to very confidently speak to my leader about taking the necessary steps and could confidently state I would be good at it.
While this book provided a lot of information that may be useful to some, the core target market of this book seems to be existing CTOs likely those who inherited that role in a startup space.
The core topics cover things around finding your next role as an existing CTO, how to work though your first 100 days and then covers topics on basic leadership which anyone who went from dev to CTO by working through a career progression would already know as they'd have spent many years in roles like team/technical lead and even head of engineering.
As someone on that path having been a developer for over a decade, a team lead working towards HOE and then CTO, this book provided almost no value, nothing for the first 100 days would be useful as when the time comes I'd have been with the company for 3+ years, everything on he short chapter on leadership skills really are just the basics and at best the bare minimum a normal leader should be doing, and far too little and simple for someone in such an important position.
Maybe I was mislead by the title, but “Becoming the leader your company deserves” does not really scream job hunting.
If your someone like me looking to better understand the role as a hole, get a better understanding of what to look towards/forward to should you have your eyes set on moving up the ranks, then this book if not for you. You'd be better off reading “Think like a CTO” by Alan Williamson.
Really enjoyed reading this, very well written, lots of details when needed and covers a lot of interesting topics that I have not come across with regards to leading teams. It also links out to a few additional resources that I've added to my arsenal for my own leadership role.
Got this as a review copy but could not bring myself to finish it.
Maybe it's me, maybe the writing style is not for me but I found the book more confusing than informative, reading through subjects I know in depth, things I've worked with for over a decade and found myself having to reread sentences and paragraphs to figure out what was being said and just ended up being confused by how a topic I'm deeply familiar with is being explained.
I gave up at chapter 3, and have tried a few times since to carry on, but I don't foresee myself ever getting back to this.
Quite a good read, having read most of the other books on the topic (there are very few), I found this one not all that informative in the context of new information, but it did dive deeper into certain and added more depth and a different perspective to the information so definitely add value to the subject at hand.
As someone preparing for this roles, I can definitely say it's something worth reading some someone in my shoes, but I cannot speak for its value to those already performing the role.
I really enjoyed reading this and found the book quite fascinating, getting to know the inner workings of Netflix and how their operations run, some of their policies kinda freak me out, mainly the one around expenses, but that's me.
Definitely a few nuggets I took out for myself as a team leader.
Not worth it at all, I gave up half way as this book lacks any from of substance or perceived value. It may have been worth something before having read Think like a CTO, although I sincerely doubt that.
It feels as it's mostly random and incoherent thoughts or ideas so blindingly obvious a toddler would figure them out.