The Journey Of The CTO

What's it like to be a CTO? 😱 Amy Tom talks to Ravi Mayuram, CTO of Couchbase, about the CTO mindset, Ravi's career journey to CTO, and skill trends in tech. Amy and Ravi talk about education, trends in data, building trust, and more.

In this episode of The Hacker Noon Podcast:

• What does a CTO do? What's the day-to-day like? Ravi says his role involves setting the right technology goals and seeing them through to completion 👊🏻 (01:50)
• Ravi explains that he got his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, but his career grew with the digital journey of technical innovations 📈 (04:50)
• Is a degree or MBA required to pursue a tech career or to pursue a management role? Ravi says, no but it does give you the theoretical knowledge you can't get from learning to code online (06:15)
• Amy asks Ravi about when he decided to get into management. He says he grew out of the phase where it was easier to talk to machines than humans 🤖 (09:00)
• Ravi hasn't always wanted to be a CTO - at one point, he dreamed of being some kind of machine operator/freight train driver. And then he found the even more beautiful digital world (14:44)
• The trend towards Artificial Intelligence and data shifts the data processing industry. Ravi and Amy talk about biases in AI, the maturity of the industry, and the need for explainability 🧠(19:30)
• To build trust and confidence with your coworkers, you should work on your domain expertise. Ravi says when you can have an honest debate about your business problems and you have the expertise to solve the problem, you have a healthy and creative environment with autonomy (23:43)
• Did Ravi have any qualms with employees working from home as we transitioned into that era of the pandemic? 🏠 (27:30)
• Ravi says, "don't expect somebody else to sit you down and teach you". Learn from a community, online, meetups, schools, etc. (29:23)
• How do you mitigate the feelings of impostor syndrome? 😳 (32:34)

Connect with Ravi Mayuram:

• You can connect with Ravi on LinkedIn
• You can follow Ravi on Twitter @RaviMayuram

Shownotes:

• You can learn more about Couchbase at https://www.couchbase.com/
• Become a Hacker Noon contributor https://app.hackernoon.com/new