Being an Impactful CTO, The ultimate guide to developer well-being
Newsletter - Issue #06
👋 Hey, we are back with the latest edition of our groCTO newsletter. Before we move into today’s reads we would like to re-introduce ourselves.
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Sit back and enjoy your this week’s issue ☕
🎙️groCTO Podcast | ‘Implementing Technology & Processes in the Age of AI’ with Jeff Watkins
Taken directly from our archives from last year, this episode of groCTO Podcast, earlier ‘Beyond The Code: Originals’, host Kovid Batra welcomes Jeff Watkins, Chief Product & Technology Officer at xDesign, who leads a team of 250+ engineers. Their conversation revolves around ‘Crucial role of understanding programmers’ psychology in effective organizational leadership’.
“You can't put people in one box,” says Watkins
Last month was Mental Health Awareness Month, during which a podcast with Jeff Watkins caught our attention. Developers, often stereotyped as uncreative, are actually incredibly innovative. Jeff Watkins discusses how values and ethics play a crucial role in development and also talked about the philosophy of the ‘Iron Triangle’—balancing time, cost, and scope—requires both technical skill and creativity. We particularly admire his emphasis on addressing, what developers want. For development teams, achieving success extends beyond meeting deadlines; it certainly involves crafting impactful products and nurturing a collaborative environment grounded in robust values and ethical principles.
The ultimate guide to developer well-being by Typo
In light of May being Mental Health Awareness Month, we came across this read at Typo and it becomes even more poignant, highlighting the pressing need to prioritize the well-being of developers in the tech industry. The competitive nature of software development demands peak mental performance, but the industry's intense focus often overlooks developers' well-being. Shocking statistics reveal high rates of burnout and mental health issues among developers. In this article, we delve into the significance of developer well-being and Typo's role in addressing this critical issue. Exploring the "Why," "What," and "How" of developer well-being, we aim to shed light on this often-neglected aspect of the tech industry.
🧑💻 How to create an engineering OS for your organization
Engineering leaders are tasked with making their teams operate efficiently.
whom you most certainly know from teamed up with the Plato for a new post. They created a playbook termed “Engineering OS” to bring you a canvas that you can use to self-audit your engineering leadership style.No one calls it that of course, but all teams have one. Some call it engineering culture. Some call it their DNA and values. Luca and Quang break it up into four sections, which are helpfully (and playfully) color coded:
🟡 Execution — how things get done.
Execution and evolution of your planning processes
Shape, form and frequency of collaborative activities and meetings
Decision-making process, documentation and procedures
🔵 Team — how teams are run.
Formation: How teams are structured, hired and operated
Growth & nurture: mentoring and coaching of team members
Calibration: Extract data, measure impact, off-boarding, succession
🟢 Engineering — how engineering work is performed, from design to operations.
Operations and maintenance strategies
Engineering intelligence: DX, Productivity, Metrics
Design and documentation
🟣 Personal productivity — how individuals operate.
Stress management
Habit formation
Time management
They help answer your most immediate introspection concerns:
How do we make decisions?
How do we plan work?
How do we grow the team?
The full article gives practical advice (and support, if you are interested) on how to get started if any of these topics hit a note with your challenges.
🙋👨✈️You are a CTO, not an expensive Copilot
You are a CTO now. But you want to code. We’ve all been there.
highlights the financial and morale motivations of letting go of operations and tactics in favor of strategic collaboration and service to your organization.His accounting exercise is an eye-opener to give you a reality check about not leveraging your scope, scale and influence correctly. Coding is the lowest leverage activity you can perform as a CTO.
Even when it is well-intentioned in emergencies, heroics steal your team’s ability to learn, adapt and adopt new challenges without your presence.
💾 Sunday Nostalgia
We found this BBC article quite surprising 😵
🕵️♂️ What a Series B Co-Founder looks for in their Leadership Team with Dee Murthy (Co-Founder, Ghost)
posted an interview with his ops partner, with Dee Murthy. Dee is giving you a reality check for what to expect as a startup Co-Founder and CTO by giving you a glimpse behind the scenes.They unravel what personality traits and unique qualities they look for in leaders who are about to embark on GO-TIME and take their startup to the next level of funding and scale.
Here’s a few highlights to help you gauge whether the full conversation will be valuable to you:
Chaos experience is priceless. Are you willing to get your hands dirty?
No work/life balance during go-time. Speed is everything, do you know what you are signing up for?
In-person for executive meetings. Remote will not work well at the high echelons of a fast-paced, dyamic startup.
90 days to deliver results as an exec before getting 🪓
How to guarantee an interview for an exec role?
Small talk. Use the Airport test.
And that’s it for today! See you next week, Ciao 👋
Credits 🙏
Curators- Diligently curated by our community members Denis & Kovid
Sponsors- This newsletter is sponsored by Typo AI - Ship reliable software faster.
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I like how you broke down the key parts of my talk with Dee and your phrase "reality check." Thank you for sharing!