Stephan Schmidt, CTO Coach - November 30, 2024
CTOs Will Be Creators Again
Take back control
TL;DR: AI enables engineers to reclaim their role as creators rather than just implementers by taking control of deployments, pipelines, and production—requiring engineers to develop business acumen and creative ideation skills to capitalize on this shift in power dynamics.
We are creators. We came into coding because we wanted to create. Coding is just a very powerful tool to create powerful things. And it’s a fascinating tool that picks your brain. Splendid. We’re all in.
We are creators. Sophie Wilson, designer of the ARM instruction set, who built a computer in a week at Acorn System. David Braben who wrote the masterpiece game Elite. Steve Wozniak who created the Apple II. Gary Kildall who created an operating system called CP/M. Dan Bricklin who created VisiCalc. We were creators.
Then there came other people. They took creation away from us. They made use robots doing their bidding. We are hired to create their ideas, not ours. We are implementors, Scrum has stolen our creator spirit, our creativity away from us.
AI will make us creators again. We control deployments. We control the AI pipelines. We control access. We control the means of production.
We need to become interested in business. We need come up with creative ideas. We can do it, we got into technology because we wanted to create. Give our creativity a way to unfold. AI is a tornado that changes all the roles, reshuffles all the cards.
We will be creators.
More Stuff from Stephan
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 confidence and navigate the challenges of fast-growing companies.
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