AMAZING CTO Newsletter
✨ The weekly, curated, opinionated Newsletter for CTOs and Engineering Managers
Join more than 3500 CTOs and Engineering Managers
Every Sunday🌞I send out a curated newsletter for busy people who care about being a CTO, leadership, software development and people for your sunny weekend to enjoy.
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Senior Director of Engineering
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Example Newsletter
This is how the newsletter looks. I often have some content on my own to start, like in this example. Then follow a list of interesting articles with my take on every one of them from my experience. Each newsletter includes an overview of the CTO job market.
Includes Books For CTOs
For all subscribers, I have included a list of must-read books for CTOs. Besides the classics, there are many surprising books you'll not going to find on other lists. I also tell you why the book is important for you.
Let's make your CTO job easier and more fun each week
Who is writing the newsletter?
As a CTO, Interim CTO, CTO Coach - and developer - I have seen many technology departments in fast-growing startups. As a kid I taught myself coding in a department store around 1981 because I wanted to write video games. When the internet came to Germany in the 90 I worked as the first coder in several startups. Late I founded a VC funded startup, worked in VC funded, fast growing startups with architecture, processes and growth challenges, worked as a manager for ImmoScout and as a CTO of an eBay Inc. company. After my wife successfully sold her startup we moved to the sea and I took up CTO coaching. You can find me on LinkedIn
Archive
- #99 | Are your devs polyworkers? + How to REALLY scale
- #98 | Why Bad Code Exists | Make or break: Delegate as Your Responsibility Grows
- #97 | `Tech Strategy. AI IDEs. Highperformers | Amazing CTO
- #96 | The Reason Your Engineering Teams Are Slowing Down
- #95 | Why Retention is No Longer Your Top Priority | Amazing CTO
- #94 | Is Your Tech Team Too Flat? Rethinking Your Tech Team Structure
- #93 | The Trap of Overengineering
- #92 | Two Lines of Code, Two Days of Headaches – Here's Why | Amazing CTO
- #91 | 💪 Is that candidate motivated? How do I find out? | Amazing CTO
- #90 | CTOs and engineers, use real words! | Amazing CTO
- #89 | What real Agile looks like + 2024 Developer Survey Results | Amazing CTO
- #88 | 77% Of Employees Say AI Has Reduced Productivity | Amazing CTO
- #87 | Don't fight with your boss 🤼♂️ + Pointless story points
- #86 | Why Developers Never Get More Productive
- #85 | Experts vs. Imitators | Amazing CTO 85
- #84 | Test-Mocking is an Anti-Pattern | Amazing CTO
- #83 | Take LLM action now + ChatGPT reset | Amazing CTO
- #82 | 💳 At Stripe: Developer tooling & DX | Amazing CTO
- #81 | 🎯 Meet Stephan + BP:We need 70% less coders because AI | Amazing CTO
- #80 | Don't measure productivity! 🍎 Why it doesn't matter that the Vision Pro is a big flop | Amazing CTO
- #79 | 🧠 Programming Is Mostly Thinking | Amazing CTO
- #78 | The CTO: A start-up’s hardest position | Amazing CTO
- #77 | Meta goes Monolith! | Amazing CTO
- #76 | The CTO Blues Song & 04/24 Software Architecture Trends Report | Amazing CTO
- #75 | Jason Fried, 37signals: Making Decisions
- #74 | Why you need a macro architecture + Brilliant Jerks in Engineering | Amazing CTO
- #73 | Developer Productivity via Humans | Words on Testing | Amazing CTO
- #72 | About joy: Engineering skills as CTO + Leadership Is A Hell Of A Drug | Amazing CTO
- #71 | LinkedIn Developer Productivity and Happiness Framework & Claude 3 claims it's conscious | Amazing CTO
- #70 | Your First Year as a CTO & Simplicity in a legacy environment | Amazing CTO
- #69 | How to keep engineers out of meeting hell | Amazing CTO
- #68 | How to hire high potential people & Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer | Amazing CTO
- #67 | How hard is it to cheat with ChatGPT in technical interviews?
- #66 | Tech Strategy and Vision | AmazingCTO
- #65 | 2024 CTO Job Market & Balancing Engineering Cultures | AmazingCTO
- #63 | How many direct reports should a manager have? | AmazingCTO
- #62 | CTOs Shape Up! | Amazing CTO
- #60 | Code Llama is as good as GPT-4 | Model Teams by Modeling Interactions | Just Use Flutter | Amazing CTO
- #59 | Sabotaging your Salary Negotiation | Free AI Copilot from Meta | Amazing CTO
- #57 | The Problem with Velocity & Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work| Amazing CTO
- #55 | ChatGPT Code Interpreter runs Python Code | Amazing CTO
- #54 | Sorry
- #53 | 🤖 No Programmers in Five Years | What Do We Owe Our Teams? | Amazing CTO
- #52 | 💰 $1M developer Salary at OpenAI & Evil VC empires | Amazing CTO Newsletter
- #51 | 🤖 New way development: Elon Musk's cost-cutting methods praised by Reddit CEO | Estimation Isn’t for Everyone
- #50 | 👨💻 The future of software engineering: self-healing code | The CTO Revelation | Amazons first engineering hire
- #49 | For you: Building Top Performing Teams, Unveiling Productivity Drivers, and ChatGPT Best Practices
- #48 | 📢 Empowering CTOs: 🌟 Lessons in Giving Away Your People | Replace your CEO with an LLM
- #47 | CTOs: Boosting Team Performance with Psychological Safety, Scaling Productivity, and Effective Engineering Management Principles
- #46 | As CYO Deciding to leave your job & Managers are human too | Amazing CTO
- #45 | Tech Insights: Unlocking Efficiency through System Design, Human Understanding, and DRI Accountability
- #44 | On my desk: new CTO book for CTOs and tech managers
- #43 | 👑 Become a better CTO: Crafting an Engineering Strategy, Identifying Red Flags in Technical Due Diligence, and Balancing Founder Intuition, Team Expertise, and Customer Expertise
- #42 | 🦹 CTO Role Insights: How to Succeed as a CTO, Reading A Manager's Mind, and the Surprising Link Between Swearwords and Code Quality
- #41 | Uncover the Latest Tech Trends: Avoid the Tech Lead Management Trap, Embrace the 1x Engineer Mindset, and the Dead of the Big Data
- #40 | Unlocking the Power of Middle Management, Demystifying the Python Paradox & Minimizing Technical Debt: A Guide to 2x Team Impact
- #39 | CTOs Revolutionizing Developer Salaries: The Impact of ChatGPT and Human-Centered Productivity
- #38 | Maximize Your CTO Role: Master the Art of Measuring Engineering, Leverage Small High-Performing Teams, and Implement Deep Work in an Asynchronous Culture
- #37 | 🦹 How Scrum Has Failed the Developers + Top 10 qualities of a good CTO
- #36 | 💻 Study: Code Quality improves developer productivity + Give me ideas for crimes to do
- #35 | ⛔ Just Say No + Startup Restructuring 101 | The Amazing CTO #35
- #34 | 🐛 Debugging teams + Only Solve One New Problem At A Time
- #33 | 📝 Scaling Engineering Checklist + I drink before I interview
- #32 | 👨💻 Kent Beck on Development Environments in the Cloud
- #31 | ☀ Maintain engineering velocity as you scale + not losing candidates
- #30 | ☁ Rails Inventor leaving the cloud - Martin Fowler on engineering vs. product - The AMAZING CTO 30.1
- #29 | 📉 How not to layoff developers + what % 2022 layoffs are devs - The AMAZING CTO 29.1
- #28 | 📅 Why development deadlines are pointless + feeling guilt signals a leader - The AMAZING CTO 28.1
- #27 | 🤖 GitHub Copilot’s impact on productivity and happiness + How to scale - The AMAZING CTO 27.1
- #26 | 🥇 Netflix’s introduces engineer levels + boost development performance - The AMAZING CTO
- #25 | Why your 🦄 startup is worth joining and 8 Productivity Experiments - The AMAZING CTO 25.1
- #24 | 🎑 Rituals for Engineering Teams and who much to pay for oncall? - The AMAZING CTO 24.1
- #23 | Bug🐛 rates: Do programming languages have an impact? - The AMAZING CTO 23.1
- #22 | 🏁 Finish what you start for productivity - The AMAZING CTO 22.1
- #21 | Technical debt 📉 should be called Technical Shorts - The AMAZING CTO 21.1
- #20 | CTO: The 👨🔬 Einstein Principle and why long-term plans don't work - The AMAZING CTO 20.1
- #19 | 💬 Interview with a CTO and A/B testging is bad - The AMAZING CTO 19.1
- #18 | How a fake 👩🚀 job offer can kill your company and CTOs taking back control with innovation - The AMAZING CTO 18.1
- #17 | 🧙 Steve Jobs On Recruiting People and The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio - The AMAZING CTO 17.1
- #16 | 💡 Innovation for CTOs, hacked by HDMI and the end of product management - The AMAZING CTO 2⁴.1
- #15 | Why 🤖 Big Tech doesn't use Scrum - The AMAZING CTO 15.1
- #14 | The toxic productivity trap and facts in software engeenring - The AMAZING CTO 14.1
- #13 | Upturn 📈 in the CTO job market, how our thinking ruins our management style and an interview - The AMAZING CTO 13.1
- #12 | Winter☃️ is coming to your company + when everything is important - The AMAZING CTO 12.1
- #11 | The saddest 'Just Ship It' story ever and the Supermarket of Software - The AMAZING CTO 11.1
- #10 | What Makes a CTO Amazing, 💸 $350,000 for Graduates and a Book - The AMAZING CTO 10.1
- #9 | Engineering culture that helps, 📚 a suprising book recommendation and saying no - The AMAZING CTO 9.1
- #8 | Why no-code doesn't scale, success is elusive and developers with two full time jobs - The AMAZING CTO 8.1
- #7 | The CTO Job Market ⛅, quality of remote jobs and start with the WHY! - The AMAZING CTO #7
- #6 | Three week outages, 🐛 bugs, bugs, bugs and AI again - The AMAZING CTO #6
- #5 | Burnouts, AI, Idea flow and an interview - The AMAZING CTO #5
- #4 | Mourning, staff engineers and successful onboarding - The AMAZING CTO #4
- #3 | About negativity in software development - Amazing CTO Newsletter #3
- #2 | About 1:1s, job titles and 'Gen-Z Mode' - Amazing CTO Newsletter #2
- #1 | Amazing CTO Newsletter #1 - The CTO Role, Location based remote salaries and more