These course-tested lectures provide a technical introduction to supersymmetric grand unified theories (SUSY GUTs), as well as a personal view on the topic by one of the pioneers in the field. While the Standard Model of particle physics is incredibly successful in describing the known universe, it is, nevertheless, an incomplete theory with many free parameters and open issues. An elegant solution to all of these quandaries is the proposed theory of SUSY GUTs. In a GUT, quarks and leptons are related in a simple way by the unifying symmetry, and their electric charges are quantized. Furthermore, the relative strength of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces are predicted. SUSY GUTs additionally provide a framework for understanding particle masses and offer candidates for dark matter. Finally, with the extension of SUSY GUTs to string theory, a quantum-mechanically consistent unification is achieved.