I haven't read this but the description seems very comprehensive! After he's got his sea legs, I would also get books on how to implement ITSM. IT Service Mana

I haven't read this but the description seems very comprehensive! After he's got his sea legs, I would also get books on how to implement ITSM. IT Service Management is the most straightforward codified way to run an IT department or set of IT services. Learn about Change Management, Incident Management, Disaster Recovery, Availability/Reliability/Redundancy. Learning about any legal regulations/laws that relate to IT. Then eventually dive into SRE, Lean, DevOps, Agile (but far down the road, not immediately).