> I'm an old timer. Most of my experience comes from experience. Most of my intellect comes from books an articles written by people who know what they are talking about. Claiming that the latter is a waste of time seems very wrong advice to me.
I wonder if you're making my point for me. As an old-timer, what you bring to the table that's more valuable than gold is hard fought experience -- not the things you've read. It's easy to read things, but to actually apply them and be responsible for their long-term consequences is rather different.
To answer your other question, I know quite a few CTOs. In particular, there are two that I know very well because I worked for them on the ground-floor building $1B+ startups at the seed-series A stage. So much of what I know came from observing what they did, asking for help, asking them to explain how they came to certain conclusions or made certain major decisions. I wanted to take apart how they did things even if I wasn't responsible for them, so I could put it back together and understand how it works. Not only that, but I kept in touch with them afterwards and found them very valuable sounding boards for when I gave my first CTO gig a shot.
It's true that experience is harder to get than knowledge from reading. But I still think reading offers a huge amount of benefit that you cannot get from experience.
One thing is that it opens up a world that is broader to your own. Another thing is that it can provide clear mental models that you probably won't figure out yourself, and that you can observe only after you know the theory.
Let me give you a clear example.
Early in my career I had to manage a junior. At the time I was reading The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. I applied the "stewardship delegation" from that book to the letter. It worked perfect. In my 19 year career, I apply it all the time, with great success (it also works on your kids :D).
But nobody I know knows about it. I could have never learned one of the most important things, from experience alone.
Even when you look at people like Bill Gates for example, they also still seem to get great value out of reading.
Thanks for the conversation, and sorry for my snarky remark, I admit I was wrong judging you :)
I wonder if you're making my point for me. As an old-timer, what you bring to the table that's more valuable than gold is hard fought experience -- not the things you've read. It's easy to read things, but to actually apply them and be responsible for their long-term consequences is rather different.
To answer your other question, I know quite a few CTOs. In particular, there are two that I know very well because I worked for them on the ground-floor building $1B+ startups at the seed-series A stage. So much of what I know came from observing what they did, asking for help, asking them to explain how they came to certain conclusions or made certain major decisions. I wanted to take apart how they did things even if I wasn't responsible for them, so I could put it back together and understand how it works. Not only that, but I kept in touch with them afterwards and found them very valuable sounding boards for when I gave my first CTO gig a shot.