Stephan Schmidt, CTO Coach - October 15, 2025
Act like Meta, if you are Meta
Don't hire for the destination, hire for the journey
TL;DR: Copying what Meta or other tech giants do now is cargo cult thinking—they solve problems at massive scale that don't apply to smaller companies. Instead, hire leaders who have successfully navigated the specific growth journey you're about to undertake (e.g., scaling 20 to 50 people), not those who merely operate at your target destination.
Act like Meta, when you are Meta. Don’t act like Meta, if you’re not Meta.
Want to be Meta by acting like Meta is one of the biggest misconceptions I see when coaching CTOs.
Adopt their development practices and processes, their time structure. If you’re Netflix, use chaos engineering (remember that?) when you also have tens of thousands of engineers. What Meta does solves their problems at their size, not yours.
If you want to become Meta, do what Meta did to become Meta, not what they are doing now.
I understand the intention and motivation. Acting like Meta will make you Meta. Acting like Amazon will make you Amazon. This is cargo cult thinking. If we act that way, we magically be that way.
Sometimes it’s a variant of “No one has been fired for buying IBM.” If CTOs don’t know what to do on their own, they look at a blog post or a conference talk or a fancy video and try that. Doing something is better than doing nothing. “It does not work? But you can’t blame me, we’re doing it like Meta” a pressured CTO might say. Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying IBM. Same thing, new clothes.
Or it’s prestige: “See, we’re doing tribes now, just like Spotify.” And the CTO feels great, and the CEO feels great because it already feels a little like you’ve made it. You haven’t.
Wearing a crown doesn’t make you king. If you act like Meta because you want to become Meta, you will fail. What Meta does is the result of their size. They didn’t work this way when they grew. They didn’t act this way when they were your size.
This also happens when hiring—often by founders. They want to get their 20 person team to a 50 person team, so they hire someone experienced in managing 50 people. Don’t! Hire someone who several times scaled a team from 20 to 50, not someone who has managed 50 people for years. If you want to add AI, hire someone who transformed a company to be AI-first, not someone who managed AI projects in a company. Hire for the right experience, and scaling from 20 to 50 is a different experience than managing 50 people. Hire for the journey, not the destination. Hiring for the destination is probably the biggest mistake when founders hire CTOs.
About me: Hey, I'm Stephan, a CTO Coach with 40+ years of software development and 25+ years of engineering management experience. I've coached and mentored 80+ CTOs and founders. I've founded 3 startups. 1 nice exit. I help CTOs and engineering leaders grow, scale their teams, gain clarity, lead with confidenceand navigate the challenges of fast-growing companies.
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