Nearly a year ago, eWEEK asked 13 CIOs how they got where they were that day. Did they follow a preformed career path, climbing the IT department career ladder rung for rung? Or did they rove in and out of the IT department on their road to success?
We learned that nearly half didn’t even start their careers in IT or even aspire to be CIOs until later down the road. The majority had held more than eight different job titles along the way; many held even more. Finally, all but a couple didn’t speak to a clearly defined “career path” but a series of decisions made on gut instinct as well as following offers they couldn’t refuse.
A story today in CIO Insight builds further on this question, asking CIOs what specific job roles they held on their way to the tops of their organizations.
More than half had been either project managers, IT-business intermediaries, programmers or systems developers for at least some period of time before graduating to CIO.
Fascinatingly, 11 percent had been school teachers at some point in their careers. This really grabbed my attention. Kind of makes you rethink the stereotypical image of an IT guy speaking only in ones and zeroes, eh?