Stephan Schmidt - July 3, 2026
You Can Be That Book Seller
The expanded edition of Amazing CTO is out, with a new chapter of 39 rules on AI
TL;DR: The expanded edition of my book Amazing CTO is out. A lot has changed since the first edition - back then AI was a pipe dream on the horizon of software engineering, today everyone uses AI to write code. So I wrote a new chapter with 39 rules on AI: owning the AI strategy, what AI does to roles and seniority, why laying off developers signals a shortage of ideas, how to protect the way juniors learn, and why control - not code - is your new bottleneck. The book grew from 140 to 180 rules, 306 pages. Free update for Leanpub readers.
A lot has changed since I published the first edition of Amazing CTO. Back then, AI was a pipe dream on the horizon of software engineering, something to think about later. Today everyone is using AI to write code. It’s the new gold rush - or the new Wild West, depending on the day.
The times remind me of the home computer revolution (I started coding in 1981, as a kid in a department store, on machines nobody knew what to do with). Everything was possible, everyone was on the starting line, no one had an advantage. Those who started doing things, won. Same with the internet revolution - we watched coffee machines at the other end of the world brewing coffee, because we could. And at a time when no one knew what to do with the internet, someone said “Let’s sell books over the internet.”
You can be that book seller.
That thought wouldn’t let me go, and because “experiments relentlessly” and “acts” are rules I preach to my coaching clients, I had to follow them myself. So I sat down and wrote a new chapter for Amazing CTO: 39 rules on AI, from my own experiments and from the experience of the CTOs I coach and talk to every week. The book grew from 140 to 180 rules, and the expanded edition is out now.
What’s in the new chapter
The rules cover what I keep discussing with CTOs anyway: AI strategy and vision (own it, before someone owns it for you), tools and prompt infrastructure, what AI does to roles and seniority, what it does to culture and fear, and control. Some teasers.
“Doesn’t lay off developers.” Companies laying off developers because “AI makes us more productive” show one thing: they have run out of ideas. Companies were never constrained by money or by developers, they were constrained by good ideas. With AI, ideas dismissed years ago for lack of engineers are suddenly possible. Think bigger, not smaller.
“Protects how juniors learn.” The beginner CTO celebrates that a junior ships a feature on her first day with AI. The Amazing CTO worries her first day is as good as she will ever get. If AI writes all the code, juniors never build the mental models that turn them into seniors - so you redesign how they learn, you don’t stop hiring them.
“Control is your bottleneck.” Every productivity leap in software came from giving up control - we gave up register allocation to compilers, memory to garbage collectors, servers to the cloud. By Amdahl's law, whatever you refuse to hand over caps your speedup. The chapter comes with a new model in the appendix, The Staircase of Control, to decide deliberately how far up the staircase you still need to hold on.
“Educates the CEO and board on AI.” The CEO reads headlines about AI replacing all developers, the board wants an “AI strategy” on one slide. Everyone has an opinion on AI, and most of those opinions are wrong. Educate the CEO and the board before someone else does it badly - the CTO is the bridge between technology and business, and that does not change with AI.
Computer Liebe
Readers of the first edition know that every part of the book comes with a song from an 80s mixtape. The AI chapter’s song is “Computer Liebe” by Paso Doble, from 1985 - a song about a computer that loves you. With the rapid rise of AI, does the AI love you? It might!
The expanded edition has 306 pages and 180 rules. If you bought the book on Leanpub, the expanded edition is a free update - that’s the Leanpub model, and one of the reasons I love it. Otherwise the book page has all the details, reviews and where to buy.
No one knows how the AI revolution plays out. But some things about how the CTO role changes are already clear, and waiting is the one strategy that reliably loses. Be that book seller.
About me: Hey, I'm Stephan, I help CTOs with Coaching, with 40+ years of software development and 25+ years of engineering management experience. I've coached and mentored 100+ CTOs and founders in more than 1200 sparring and coaching sessions. I've founded 3 startups. 1 nice exit. I help CTOs and engineering leaders grow, scale their teams, gain clarity, lead with confidence and navigate the challenges of fast-growing companies.
Most of the CTOs I coach didn't know CTO coaching was a thing until they were already drowning. It is a thing - here's what it is.
