Typing was never the job.

Senior developers, and developers who want to become one. You have shipped enough to know that the hard part was never the typing, and now an agent types faster than you ever did. The question is what you are paid for, and the book answers it without telling you to code less or to become a manager.

If you are a lead or a CTO, one chapter is for you: how to write the senior role down so that it holds in 1:1s, promotions and pay. The rest is for the people you need.

A senior's core is judgment. The book splits it into three choosings and one duty. Intent chooses what is worth building. Taste chooses whether it is good. Grit chooses to go on until it is finished and keeps running. And then a senior multiplies that judgment in other people, so that a decision still gets made when she is not in the room.

One feature runs through the whole book, from a sales call where somebody half-promises it to a Saturday incident weeks after release. Every chapter opens with a question somebody asks the senior about that feature: Can we do it by Friday? The tests are green, ship it? Who takes care of it? The answers are the book.

Table of contents follows when the chapters are final.

I taught myself programming as a kid in 1981, on a computer in a department store, because I wanted to write video games. Since then I have written code for over forty years, was engineering manager at ImmoScout24 and CTO of an eBay subsidiary, founded a VC-funded startup and made most of the mistakes this book is about. Today I coach CTOs, run workshops for senior developers, and write the Amazing CTO book and newsletter.

The senior role is the biggest lever I know in an engineering organization, and in most companies it is defined too small. This book is what I tell seniors in the workshops, written down.

When is it out?

I am writing it now. No date yet, I would rather not promise a Friday.

Does it tell me to stop coding?

No. Technical experience stays the foundation, the book is about what comes on top of it.

I am a lead or a CTO. Is it for me?

One chapter is written for you, the rest lets you see the role from the senior's seat. If you need seniors and have to say what one is, that is useful.

Which formats?

Ebook first, on Leanpub and Amazon, like Amazing CTO. Print follows.