Modern CTO

Generally good advice. Some of it felt a bit more designed for a particular type of consumer app company but it’s easy to extrapolate the advice in a meaningful way. The book provided a good and clear definition of the charter of a CTO which is good validation of what I’ve observed across peers and friends.

If you are looking for a step-by-step guide to navigating the path from developer to CTO, if you're looking for advice on how to handle a specific situation or if you want to wake up tomorrow as a CTO, this may not be the book for you.This book and Joel's accompanying podcast puts you (the reader/listener) in the drivers seat, where onus is on you to make the final decision. Joel provides a holistic view of the skills and resources he has found necessary to progress through his career, and he shares them in a transparent and frill-less manner. It's a simple and honest sharing of his experiences, in a manner that I interpreted to be meant more as structure for how his hurdles were solved than a step-by-step guide to exactly what he did.If you find joy and purpose in taking abstract principles and applying them to the specific hurdles that you face, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for a step-by-step guided pathway to becoming a CTO, then I'm not sure this book will satisfy.

I read the negative reviews after already buying the book and decided to take a chance on reading it anyway.It maybe takes 30-45 minutes from front to back, but if you have any experience in real-life engineering teams, there isn't any new information here. It's primarily trivial analogies and anecdotes with virtually zero tactical takeaways on what may make or break a "modern" CTO.Do yourself a favor and check out the Gene Kim books. If you can get past the sometimes-hokey storytelling, there are real examples of how technical leaders can respond to specific situations.

I most enjoyed the process of what he did, how he did it and the outcomes of his journey from developer to CTO.Not a how to step by step but more of a "I did this in the beginning", now go look for the solutions you need.

Short read and you can quickly glance it through. If you have been a software developer for long you may not find anything new in this book.

I appreciate your journey and found similarities with my path. Your insight is helpful and motivational. Thanks for sharing this with us...

My main issue with this book is how arrogant the author is. This book has a ton of emotion in it and lacks a non-biased opinion of the industry. Maybe that was the intent....It also lacked a lot of depth. The areas that he discussed were so high level, and honestly just common sense.I will say that I did end up reading the whole book even though I gave it a 1 star. While I don't feel like I learned anything new, it was a bit comical reading how highly Joel thought of himself.

One of the most important type of executive nowadays, but often least talked about, the CTO wears many hats. Modern CTO brings the role of the CTO to the forefront, offering practical advice to build your tech business as a CTO. From scaling, problem solving techniques, leadership, and many more topics, Joel answers the questions that many CTOs have but don't speak out about in Modern CTO.

As other reviewers have pointed out the style of this book is more casual and perhaps more suited to a personal blog.This in itself wouldn’t be an issue but the causal style comes across a little clumsy, light and in-cohesive.It was interesting hearing about this personal journey and some of the assumptions and realities of a particular (product) type of CTO.Finally, you’d be forgiven after reading this that only male CTOs exist, which isn’t very modern. The male lion on the front is the first sign of this.It’s also expansive for what is a vary short book.

Lots of words, without going into much detail, but then at 114 pages, I didn't expect much. There's a few good stories but its difficult to assimilate the detail that is there and apply it to your own situation. I'm currently Head of Architecture, next position will be C.T.O. and I don't think this book is a treatise on how to get there sooner.

When you're in a tech startup or employed tech role you constantly need to search for best practice. With so many technologies and approaches out there it is difficult to know for sure that you are doing all of the right things, especially when you have nobody above you to correct yourself... except yourself!The ModernCTO does a great job of talking through all of the bases so you can gather valuable insights from the experiences of Joel himself as well as other big players in the tech scene.This is a must read for Developers, CIO's, CTO's and any Directors of tech businesses, which is every business these days.

I find this book respects my time, it's short, explains things simply and keeps things concise.Alot of books teaching you on a topic tend to have too many pages dedicated to what can be summed up in a paragraph, this book doesn't. It gets to the point quickly.Handy as a reference manual and an introduction the field, worth getting if you're interested in (or doing) the job of a CTO/tech leader.

Sadly, I found this book more like a collection of observations than a coherent book on being a CTO. No doubt those observations translate well to podcasts, but they need more coherence to bring them together into a book that you can read cover-to-cover.Two stars though as some of the experiences mentioned were useful to read... when I’d finished picking though.