Amazing CTO | More happiness and success
🚀 Issue 13.1

by Stephan Schmidt

Happy Friday,

do you love your CEO? Too strong of a word? But if you’re a cofounder you’re in a kind of marriage with them. And if not, the biggest influence on your work as CTO still has the CEO. I have seen many CTOs struggling in their relationship with the CEO. What I tell everyone: at first talk about both your expectations, in your role and the role of the other. Best case they match, worst case you need to talk. But it’s the first step to getting a better relationship. See, it’s like marriage.

Do you want to learn more? I banded together with the magnificent Sebastian to make a webinar. Because we want to help everyone, it’s free.

“Fix Your Broken CEO-CTO Marriage!”

This week’s insights include

• 🗣3 questions to Daniel Bartholomae, CTO at optilyz
• ⛅ CTO Job Market Weather
• Product Shouldn’t Be Left to 🧙 Product Managers
• Structural Lessons in Engineering Management

Good reading, nice weekend ❤️ and until next week,

Stephan

3 Questions to Daniel Bartholomae, CTO at optilyz

1. What makes a CTO amazing?

A great CTO builds a bridge between technology and business, not by being the bridge herself, but instead by setting up an organization where every developer is entrenched with a deep understanding of the user and business needs.

2. What is currently the biggest challenge for a CTO?

There is the obvious answer: I know no CTO that isn’t currently struggling with hiring great talent. But I would rephrase this as a bigger challenge: To build environments where we can teach and nurture developers from bootcamps, who are self-taught or who otherwise have a diverse background.

3. How do we develop software in 30 years?

In the future, coding will be more accessible, with more people being able to build applications out of components, without needing the same deep technical understanding we still often need today. In 30 years, what is now 6 months of development effort will usually be a single import statement instead.

THANKS DANIEL for the answers!

⛅ CTO Job Market Weather

How is the CTO job market? Germany is slightly down to 34 open positions on Indeed while the US is at an all time high with 107.

Article of the week

Product Shouldn’t Be Left to Product Managers

Doesn’t the title say it all? Too often engineers and CTOs only look at coding and executing. “Once I realized that I was hired to solve problems and have to understand the product to solve them, my career started to go up fast.”

https://candost.blog/mektup/mektup-32/

Stories I’ve encountered last week

Structural Lessons in Engineering Management

A very well-written article about how we think as engineering managers and how we apply our default mode of structural thinking to organizing teams. And where this fails us.

https://skamille.medium.com/structural-lessons-in-engineering-management-f32b5ffaa1aa

One Job, One Pay

Another company joins “One Job, One Pay” and moves away from employees’ physical locations. I do feel this is the only way forward if you haven’t made preparations.

https://graphcdn.io/blog/one-job-one-pay

TomTom is laying off 500 employees due to automation

This is not a recession article. It shows the power of automation, TomTom is laying off 10% of its workforce because they have automated the creation of maps. My belief is startups don’t automate enough and this is confirmed in most startups I look into. As CTO you can help a company tremendously. Start by sending engineers everywhere to watch how people work. They will come back with many ideas.

https://www.tomtom.com/press-room/earnings-&-other/27646/tomtom-improves-mapmaking-process-supported-by-aligned-maps-organization/

What Good, Cash-Strapped Hiring Looks Like

While I do not agree with everything - you do need a vision! - I agree with a lot of the article. A detailed article with quite useful ideas on how to make your hiring more successful. Currently, hiring? Read it!

https://commoncog.com/blog/cash-strapped-hiring/

What Would a Recession Mean For Developers?

I’m not sure if there is a real recession coming, if companies lay off people because of declining revenue, or if the layoffs are happening because of over-preparing VCs - kind of a VC-induced firing spree. Read the article in reverse: What would a Recession Mean for CTOs? Would it make hiring easier?

https://blog.boot.dev/news/what-would-a-recession-do-to-developers/

Onboarding Effectively - Mindset and 100-day Plan

Oh man, how often do I see CTOs put a lot of effort into hiring and then drop the ball on onboarding. Setup people for success, not failure. A great guide to onboarding and getting the best from your new hire (and make them happy and successful)

https://eugeneyan.com/writing/onboarding/