If you only read one thingHow to Turn a Prototype into a Production-Ready Application (10 minute read) Excellent article from a friend of mine (who is an outstanding CTO) about how to get from a prototype or MVP to a product. The mistake too many CTOs make is to use the prototype/MVP code base, put it into scaling and then get lots of problems with technical debtâoften leading to a rewrite. That rewrite is way too late, has huge business impact and could have been avoidedâby a rewrite after MVP. And this article tells you how. Must read (at least for your next startup ;-) https://devpg.substack.com/p/how-to-turn-a-prototype-into-a-production?r=1sz9yp&triedRedirect=true Graph of the weekOpen LLM Progress Tracker (5 minute read) âThis app visualizes the progress of proprietary and open-source LLMs over time as scored by the LMSYS Chatbot Arena.â
ELO for LLMs. Nice. The example is for Coding ELO over time.
Tweet of the weekNetBSD Foundation đ© (1 minute read)
https://mastodon.sdf.org/@netbsd/112446618914747900 https://huggingface.co/spaces/andrewrreed/closed-vs-open-arena-elo Video of the weekAfrica by Toto but its played on instruments in Majoraâs Mask (10 minute read) AMAZING. How are your customers using your product in ways you havenât intended?
(Just watch customer support for a day how they use the backoffice app you
wroteâthey never use it as intendedâwhich is a good thing!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av5oRf88aso
Stories Iâve enjoyed this weekExpedia Group CTO Rathi Murthy out due to âviolation of company policyâ (5 minute read) I found two things interesting. They fired a CTO, which is a very rare event. I wonder why, I wonder what the violation of company policy they cite is. But you know the executive secret, donât you? They will let you violate policy like travel expenses, so they have something to fire you. And there is always the official reason and the real reason. I wonder what the real reason was. The second thing? The CTO âunveiled the companyâs âSpring Releaseâ of new products and updates on the main stage.â - not a CPO. You want to be a tech company? (and you told investors you are!) Then put the CTO on stage. https://www.phocuswire.com/rathi-murthy-expedia-group-cto Stripeâs monorepo developer environment (24 minute read) Very long article, that reinforces the point I always make. Devs remember the great development environments at Google or Metaâor Stripe. And those companies invest heavily early on in developer experience and internal tooling. Make it as easy and pleasant for developers to work. They will stay longer - and tell everyone how great it was to work for you. Case closed. Also productivity. https://blog.nelhage.com/post/stripe-dev-environment/ Processes donât create ownership, people do (5 minute read) Great article I agree and disagree with. I agree with âOwnership must be developed and nurtured continuously. Itâs a prolonged effort.â My client CTOs want ownership from their teams, but often donât put in the effort. Everything you do, what you say, how you make decisions need to enforce ownership. âStephan what should I do?â âWhat would you do?â Everytime. Everywhere. I disagree where the article puts down processes. Processes make it clear who is responsible and who is owning what. This is the base for making people responsible and make them take ownership. Spoken and written expectations. https://www.florianbellmann.com/blog/creating-ownership Why I Love Laravel (2 minute read) The best framework choice is a framework with less coding: âThe biggest reason why I keep coming back is how fast it is for me to build things in Laravel. Itâs one of those everything-included frameworks: you can generate pre-built login and password reset pagesâ Devs will not come up with that one, because it is not shiny, has no buzzwords, is not functional programming and doesnât buy street cred. Of course, as CTO, youâre at odds with the tech choices of your developers therefor. You can find out if someone is senior, if they agree to use Laravel because it is the best choice (or Rails, or Django etc.). Apple desperately needs its Next Big Thing (15 minute read) The visionary founder goes. The money guy takes the helm. The designers leave. No new products. I see this often in startups, when they want to become âprofessionalâ and bring in professional people. Innovation goes out the door. Good bye and good luck. Be careful. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-tim-cook-running-out-of-ideas-iphone-ipad-sales-2024-5 How to become a CTO (10 minute read) You are already a CTO? But this article is gold for many things. For âI also like to say that a CTO is a business role.â and it splits CTO responsibilities in business, tech and strategy. And when you grow, how tech gets smaller and smaller. But donât forget, do not delegate everything that you đ©· or there is nothing left in the job you đ©·. https://newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/how-to-become-a-cto This could come in handy. Getting back blocked social media accounts. I guess there is an industry brewing, unblocking your Google cloud account, Amazon account, Facebook account when support doesnât answer. Keep this url, it might be handy. And you might become the hero of marketing! (I know you already are :-) Tone at the top (21 minute read) People always look at the top. Itâs never wrong to do as you boss does. In accounting, the term is âtone at the topâ - ethics tickles down. I have seen this in many startups. If the top is rotten, so is the startup. As a CTO at least you can stop the buck and make it clear that you will not tolerate unethical behaviour. And remember, they look at what youâre doing, not what youâre saying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_at_the_top How to fix bugs in 24 hours or less (5 minute read) Want to astonish your customers? Fix a bug in 24h or less. See here how. Getting bugs fixed instead of letting them lie around, bitrot and take mind share helps with productivity. and what is your next product? Join the CTO newsletter! | |
