From IT Director to VP: What it really takes to make the leap

If you’re an IT Director eyeing that VP or CIO title, here’s the good news: the ladder to the top is getting shorter. But it’s not just about clocking time anymore. Today, the fastest climbers are doing things a little differently.

We analyzed the career paths of more than 1,300 IT leaders at SaaS companies. First, we looked at 1,000 LinkedIn profiles of current IT Directors (read our deep dive analysis on that dataset here). Then, we compared it to the profiles of 300 former IT Directors who recently leveled up to VP, CIO, or equivalent roles.

Some of what we found matched what you’d expect. But a few things genuinely surprised us:

• People who entered the workforce after 2008 are getting promoted way faster than earlier generations
• Job-hopping isn’t slowing anyone down — in fact, it might be speeding them up
• Having a strong LinkedIn network turned out to be more predictive of promotion than some certifications

So what’s really powering the next wave of IT leadership and how do you become a CIO? Let’s dig in.

The IT career path: How long it takes for IT directors to get promoted

First, we looked at the classic question — how long does it actually take to move up?

On average for those in our dataset:

• It took 12.5 years of professional experience to reach IT Director
• And nearly 22 years to climb to VP or higher

At first glance, the career ladder looks long — and maybe a little daunting. So we looked at when people entered the workforce. That’s when things started to get interesting.

We broke our dataset into three groups: those who joined the workforce before 2001, those who entered between 2001-2008 and those who joined the workforce after 2008. 

If you zoom in a bit you can see the three groups have distinctly different distributions.

It’s pretty clear that there has been a structural shift in the workplace. The tenure of IT Directors at each promotion interval has been going down over time. People who entered the job market before 2001 took twice as long to snag a VP role compared to people who entered after 2008!

The rise of the strategic job hopper

Faster promotions made us wonder — are folks also switching jobs more often? Short answer: yep!

When we double clicked on the average time IT Directors spent in each role during their career we found people who started working before 2001 stayed about 4.1 years per role. People who started after 2008? Just 2.3 years per role.

But wait — doesn’t job-hopping look bad? It turns out it’s no longer a red flag. In fact, among the IT Directors who were promoted to VP or above, shorter stints were the norm — not the exception.

Why 2008 changed everything for IT careers

At this point it was pretty clear something happened around 2008 that changed the game for IT careers. Promotions to VP were happening twice as fast while job tenures were cut in half. 

That felt big. So we asked, What actually happened around that time?

Turns out, 2007–2010 was a perfect storm of disruption — technologically, economically, and culturally. Here are a few things that were going on at the time:

• 📱The iPhone launched in 2007, kicking off the mobile-first revolution. Suddenly, employees expected work tools to be as slick as their phones. IT had to keep up.
  
  
• ☁️ Cloud computing went mainstream. AWS was gaining traction, and SaaS started eating the software world. IT Directors were no longer just managing infrastructure — they were managing integrations, vendors, and user experiences.
  
  
• 💬 Social media exploded. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter changed how people communicated and built their personal brands — especially in tech.
  
  
• 📉 The 2008 financial crisis hit, forcing companies to rethink IT as a strategic lever — not just a cost center. Budgets shrank, but opportunities grew for leaders who could do more with less.
  
  
• 🔒 Cybersecurity and compliance became board-level issues. Directors who knew “the cybers” found themselves stepping into CISO and VP roles faster than their peers.

Put simply, If you started your career after 2008, you entered a world that needed IT leaders to move faster, think broader, and act more strategically.

And the IT Directors who leaned into those shifts? They got promoted.

Fast-forward to today. It’s clear that with the advent of AI (including agentic AI), we’re in the early stages of a similarly transformative moment for the role of IT.

BOTTOM LINE: It’s helpful for IT Directors (and really everyone) to step back and look at the big trends going on around them. Ask how they’re going to impact their roles. Then, decide how (or if) they want to lean in to them.

Geography matters (and not how you think)

IT Directors can’t control when tech revolutions happen. But they can control where they work. So we wondered — does where you work change your career trajectory?

We mapped the average time in role by state, and found some states where IT careers move at a faster clip. IT Directors in Colorado, California, Massachusetts, Texas and New York were on a faster track staying about 3 years in each role while states like Pennsylvania and Virginia are closer to 4 years.

Those fast-track states tend to have a higher proportion of SaaS tech companies. So, it could be that people job hop more often there simply because there’s more competition and demand for their services.

On a related note we found that some states are punching way above their weight. Texas, Florida, New York, and Massachusetts are producing a larger share of promotions for IT Directors relative to their population.

BOTTOM LINE: Your zip code might actually speed up (or slow down) your climb.

Your LinkedIn profile might matter more than your certifications

This was one of our favorite findings. When we looked at LinkedIn data, promoted IT leaders had, on average, twice as many followers as those who stayed in an IT Director role.

And it’s not just about tenure. Younger cohorts — who grew up with LinkedIn — had bigger networks and better visibility. If you think of LinkedIn followers as a proxy for the size of your professional network it makes sense. With 80 percent of jobs coming from someone's network (vs. a blind job application) it stands to reason that those that have larger networks are more likely to get promoted.

It’s also interesting to see how VP-and-above IT leaders talk about themselves. We looked at the “About” section of their LinkedIn profiles and created word clouds for the folks who had been promoted and compared them to the IT Directors. The biggest thing that stands out by far is that IT Directors who were recently promoted are talking a lot about security skills compared to those that haven’t made the leap yet.

BOTTOM LINE: Building your network matters. And it matters more than you think. Think about spending an afternoon polishing that profile. Post. Connect. Comment. Future you will thank you.

Skills and certifications: What actually moves the needle

The world is awash in certifications leading to the perennial question — do they still matter? The short answer is … sort of.

What we found was that — similar to that word cloud above — security experience was, by far, the most most predictive of being promoted beyond Director level. Many of the people in our study either ended up leading multi-function teams, or stepping into a security role (like CISO). 

In addition to security, AI, CISSP and MBA were all reasonably frequently present in the experience of people who were promoted to more senior leadership, but with less impact than security.

Be careful not to take this the wrong way. This isn’t to say that a certification isn’t a good idea — more education is very infrequently a bad thing — but that it’s unlikely to mean the difference between your current job and that VP title.

BOTTOM LINE: If you’re looking to future-proof your career, spending time learning "the cybers" is a fantastic investment.

Degrees: Helpful for IT Directors, but not dealbreakers

Finally, we also took a peek at educational backgrounds. Most IT Directors had at least a Bachelor’s degree. Master’s degrees helped a little when it came to getting promoted. However, while the data does suggest that while some sort of secondary education is useful it is by no means necessary (or predictive) of scoring a promotion to VP.

What seemed to matter more? Business fluency — understanding finance, operations, leadership, and how IT fits into the bigger business picture. The prevalence of MBAs in the sample suggests a program with broad exposure to finance and other business topics may be really useful, as you prepare for the fast-paced world of spreadsheets and board meetings.

BOTTOM LINE: Fancy degrees are nice. But building cross-functional leadership skills are likely more impactful on how fast you move up the career ladder.

Conclusion: IT leadership is a faster, looser, more exciting game now

If you entered the workforce after 2008, you’re playing by a different set of rules — and that’s a good thing. The career ladder is shorter. The pace is faster. And the winners aren’t the ones waiting patiently at the bottom — they’re the ones making smart, strategic moves every few years.

If you’re aiming for VP or CIO, here’s our advice:

• Don’t wait for permission.
• Lean in to new tech and new trends that are disrupting IT.
• Build your leadership and cybersecurity muscles.
• Stay visible. Stay mobile. Stay curious.
  

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