I often get asked why, as a senior executive, I still spend time in the terminal. Isn't that "in the weeds"? Shouldn't I be looking at dashboards?
The truth is, the Command Line Interface (CLI) is the closest you can get to the bare metal of your business's technology. It is the contrast to the polished, sanitized world of PowerPoint.
It's Not About Coding
I don't expect a CEO to write production Java. But I do believe there is immense value in "Technical Literacy."
Knowing how to curl an API endpoint tells you if your website is down, even if the status page (which might be cached) says it's up. Knowing how to grep logs lets you see the raw error messages instead of the sanitized summary.
It’s the difference between reading a financial statement and counting the cash in the register. Sometimes, you need to count the cash.
The Anatomy of a Command
When you type ls -la, you are asking the computer a direct question. "List everything, including the hidden stuff."
In meetings, executives often ask high-level questions ("How is the project going?"). A CLI mindset teaches you to ask specific, queryable questions:
- "What are the open P0 bugs?" (
ls -la bugs) - "Show me the last 5 customer complaints." (
tail -n 5 complaints.log)
Dispelling the Magic
The biggest risk in managing technology is treating it like magic. When you think the cloud is a magic fluffy place, you make bad decisions about it. When you know it's just a bunch of Linux servers you can ssh into, the mystique vanishes and the economics become clear.
Where to Start
You don't need to master awk or sed. Just learn:
- Navigation:
cd,ls,pwd(Where am I?) - Inspection:
cat,less,grep(What is this?) - Connectivity:
ping,curl(Is it working?)
A little bit of literacy goes a long way. It earns you respect from your engineering team, and more importantly, it gives you a BS-detector that no dashboard can provide.