How to make a career to CIO?

Question

Career in IT

Guys, tell me:
1) Is it possible to get from a programmer to a CIO (IT Director)?
2) And what steps of the career ladder do you need to overcome before becoming an IT director?
3) What should a proger know and be able to do in order to move to a project manager in the future, and then to an IT director?
4) what would you like to go to IT managers, in what area do you need to develop, in the study of technology or do you need to know the IT infrastructure and deal with servers and so on?
ps - guys, I'm asking questions because I don't know, so refrain from any stupid, humorous answers, and answers like Google and so on

Answer 1

Our firm has a similar story.
Question number 1) Yes, the guy worked for us. support. After 3 years, he became a tech. director. It all depends on the company, I think, and on your perseverance.
Question number 4) What do you think? Knowing a couple of programming languages ​​is very little! The director, in fact, should not program! When that guy (TP) was taken to those. director, he was mostly engaged in servers and other trifles. Sometimes he writes code.
First of all, you need the ability to think competently, correctly distribute tasks among employees and have managerial and leadership qualities, not to mention the fact that you must be a fairly experienced programmer and system. admin (otherwise what kind of director are you, who even the network cannot set up). A manager is first and foremost a manager. But for a project manager to become an IT director, I have little idea of ​​it. But maybe I'm wrong!

Answer 2

Until recently, I worked as an IT director. Gone :) I'll try to explain why.
There are two types of companies.
The first are industrial and commercial organizations in which IT is telephony, servers, a fleet of computers, their own 1C configurations (or some kind of Parus) and stupid users (average age >= 40 years) who use all this. You will be lucky if a large-scale task arises, such as automating budgeting or production accounting, especially if the production is complex. It is interesting. In this case, the CIO is required to be a business analyst and have a good understanding of production and business processes (as a result, he begins to understand the operation of the enterprise better than the general). He is not required to be a good programmer, project manager, etc. But when such projects are completed, only the usual routine of maintaining the technopark's performance remains. It's already completely boring.
The second are companies in which IT is an integral part of the process of creating additional value, i.e. is not a service (as in the first case) but a production process. In this case, the CIO must be the technologist of the corresponding production process. For example, if a company produces software, then the CIO must know the development process very well.
Who do you want to be?