I'm a software engineer with good people skills.?
There are several C-suit paths for a developer as I have illustrated in graphics above... Fastest path depends on what is valued most at the company you work for (or want to work for)... Here are few examples: 1) One of the fastest rise to top in IT services is by Francisco D'Souza at Cognizant. What's valued at Cognizant? Business Development. He demonstrated success in Biz Dev at every level and continued to rise at un-precedented speed. 2) One of the fastest rise to top in tech industry is by Sundar Pichai at Google. What's valued at Google? Able to get technically superior product out to public in a very short time... He had demonstrated that before joining at Google and continued his track record there w/ chrome and android