If you only read one thingWhen Youâre Told Youâre Not Strategic Enough (15 minute read) âThese fears materialized when the CEO bluntly told him, âI donât think youâre strategic enough.ââ If there is one thing CEOs miss in my clients, in CTOs Iâve talked to and experienced over the years, then that they are not strategic enough (close second: not enough business knowledge). And even if you have a strategy, but âIf your strategy isnât seen and understood, itâs as if it doesnât exist at all.â Towards your CEO and your reports! Talk, talk, talk, you canât overcommunicate. If you talk about your strategy and developers finish your sentences, then theyâve got it. Another nugget, "[..] their first instinct is often to seek clarification by asking for specific examples or definitions of strategy. While this is well intentioned, it can sometimes come across as defensive." Not sometimes. Always. Donât be defensive, especially as an executive. Juniors being defensive, not a big deal, executives? Youâve failed. Another golden tip from the article on how to convey your strategy: âUse storytelling.â Youâre the modern story teller. My tip: Have a vision (golden future where you want to be in 2â5 years), from that form a strategy how to get there and explain it to the CEO and your reports (and everyone who wants to listenâdevelopers and your peers in marketing and sales). No longer will someone tell you âyouâre not strategic enough.â Why are you not strategic though? The CTOs I know are bogged down in fire fighting, havenât delegated their day-to-day jobs they acquired when the company was smaller, they get lots of business pressure to deliver and have no time to think about a strategy and formulate one, on top they donât know how to do so. Delegate, get out of day-to-day operations (You have no clue about 80% of the features developed, gooooood!) and shift to being a strategic executive (read some books on strategy, reply if you need one). https://hbr.org/2024/10/when-youre-told-youre-not-strategic-enough?ab=HP-hero-featured-text-1
Stories Iâve enjoyed this weekHow I write code using Cursor (12 minute read) I have been a Jetbrains/IDEA (Goland) user since their very first release two decades agoâmost of the time a paying customer, as a CTO getting the budget and introducing Jetbrains to developers. Some time ago, I was so frustrated with the IMHO very bad (integration+results) AI in Jetbrains/Goland, that I experimented with Cursor. The difference is like night and day. Cursors AI is fast, knows about the file, knows about the codebase, and is a tremendous productivity boost. For details on Cursor and why your developers should use it, read the article. I guess Jetbrains lost me after two decades as a customer. And they have all read âThe innovatorâs dilemmaâ (you have!) and know about being disrupted as a market leader by upshots with new technologies. Still, companies fail again and again. Sad. Youâre not being disrupted, are you by someone without your baggage, technical and feature debt? https://www.arguingwithalgorithms.com/posts/cursor-review.html Context is that which is scarce (10 minute read) âEver wonder about the vast universe of critically acclaimed aesthetic masterworks, most of which you do not really fathom? If you dismiss them, and mistrust the critics, odds are that you are wrong and they are right.â I tend to tell people that if they donât understand something, or they think someone is stupid, think againâitâs an opportunity to learn. Ask another question, it might be that you donât understand the real problem. Which nicely fits in with the concept of context is scarce. âMany attributions of bad motives to people, [..] spring from a lack of understanding of context.â All fintech companies end up like PayPal because of the context you canât see. Which also means for you: Developers in your department have mostly no context at all, they havenât been in all the 1on1s with CEO like you have, and they havenât been in the board meetings, and they donât know what the VP of Marketing is thinking. They donât know why and how the company, and you arrived at a decision. They might think the members of the management board are âbad peopleâ. Give context. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/02/context-is-that-which-is-scarce-2.html Apple is Killing Swift (30 minute read) âApple is Killing Swiftâ while I myself see Swift spread (next big thing?). There are some arguments in there, but Iâm always skeptical when languages are driven by language enthusiasts. Iâve been using Python in the 90s because it had a better CGI module compared to Perl. But the speed (servers were also slower) and the lack of types let me move away. What is my point? Python got to the top because of itâs use by data scientists and AI. Not because of the language. I dropped Scala (like everyone else) because of the compiler speed. Scala maintainers thought it would be a great playground for their language ideas, without regard to users and their needs. Kotlin is successful not because a company markets it, but because it solves developersâ problems. The up and down of Swift will also be driven by how useful it is, not by the governance model. How does this insight help you? Technologies are not driven by their ideological merits, but by how useful they are for users. You can use this insight to predict the success of your technologies if youâre a tech startup or the success of the tools you use (and might migrate away from because a developer convinced you to use something because of its ideological merits, Linux Desktop anyone?) https://blog.jacobstechtavern.com/p/apple-is-killing-swift A mysterious new image generation model has appeared (14 minute read) There is a new image generation model called âred_pandaâ by Recraft.ai. The two example images in the article look terrific, for the first itâs hard to see that itâs AI, the second looks nice as a marketing poster, something someone would create with Photoshop in an hour or two. They lack that AI look (remember those early HDR photos?). What is next? Short films better than from Pixar? Someone asked me where I see development and AI recently, no clue, weâre in a tornado, and significant progress is made every few months. Besides computer science, I have studied philosophy at university, and my favorite philosopher was Karl Popper. Popper argued you canât predict the future from the past because of unpredictable events, like inventions (black swans!), you canât see coming. This is where we are now. Just next month the first, AAA, blockbuster, AI-generated movie could pop up out of nowhere and make a billion $. Technology nowadays is not flowing but jumping. Take a look at those images! https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/28/a-mysterious-new-image-generation-model-has-appeared/ Psychological Safety vs. High Standards: A Misunderstood Dynamic (22 minute read) What is psychological safety? I often think my CTO clients misunderstand or overstretch it. Psychological safety is the safety to speak openly and donât feel threatened. But as a manager, you need to give direct, candid, open feedbackâwhile still staying polite and nice. You can be nice and candid, people can have psychological safety, while you demand high standards. Many CTOs confuse nice with sugar-coating. High Standards? First step, tell everyone you expect high standards and act accordingly. There is no way around it, there is pressure, and you should express that you want excellent engineering that produces excellent results as fast as possible. You donât need to be a toxic boss for that. The article has more details:
https://www.leadingsapiens.com/psychological-safety-vs-high-standards/ On Good Software Engineers (22 minute read) A long article with musings on what is a good software engineer. Many good points (or points I do agree with, so Iâm biased on whatâs good). What is a good engineer? (my take:) Depending on the level, different things: a junior needs to be able to write good code, a developer needs to be able to develop and finish features on their own, a senior needs to be able to make tradeoffs between deadlines, maintainability, technology, and business. A good engineer needs to be able to do their job on their level (many donât). The even more interesting question to me, What is a great engineer? Ownership and taking responsibility, Iâd say, or in the words of the article âGreat engineers do all of the above but proactively. If they see a broken process, they donât walk past the problem or wait for someone elseâs permission. They take action to fix it.â Give that to developers, who still think a good engineer is the one with the longest experience in one programming language. https://candost.blog/on-good-software-engineers/ Stop Ignoring Your High Performers (15 minute read) Oh, Iâd wish weâd only had high performers.
Only once I want to work in a company where the CEO let me hire half the people with double the salary. But, no,
âthe market rateâ dictates what HR tells the CEO is the right price (prize?) for
developers. So I need to manage whom I can attract. BUT at least I can
look out for the high performers. Lately I found some of my clients had
problems with promotions. The reason seems to be hope-driven-promotion,
where you promote someone in the hope they can do the job. I promoted people
to a job because they already did the job informally (e.g. lead)âthey were
high performers in their role. I get it, youâre under pressure and donât have time,
and see high performers as saviors to your problems, youâre thankful that you donât need to care,
but âMany managers operate under the assumption that high performers are
self-sufficient and require less attention.â - that just drives them away.
Donât spend most of your people time budget on getting the under performers to do the minimum, that
wonât move the - your! - needle. You will not be able to hire only high performers (Dear CEOs, please!), https://hbr.org/2024/10/stop-ignoring-your-high-performers A bizarre cult is growing around AI-created memecoin âreligionsâ: AI Eye (10 minute read) This is bizarre, but I wanted to share this one. A meme perfected by LLMs. Ah, the singularity. We see this second reality in peoples minds already, but this is just the start, LLMs will drive future belief systems. I wonder if itâs then like Netflix, everyone watching something different, and weâre no longer able to bond over shared experiences and ideas. âWhat LLM do you believe today?â Join the CTO newsletter! | |
