Metrics Culture; Leader's Blindspots; CTO's Dev Metrics Guide; Effective Software Delivery; Hiring or Building Tech Teams

Issue #43 Bytes

🌱 Dive into Learning-Rich Sundays with groCTO ⤵️

🎙️ Data-Driven Engineering: Building a Culture of Metrics ft. Mario, Sr. EM @Contentsquare.

On the latest groCTO podcast, Mario Viktorov Mechoulam, Senior Engineering Manager at Contentsquare, shares his playbook for introducing engineering metrics, overcoming resistance, and getting leadership buy-in.

Key takeaway? Metrics aren’t just for tracking; they shape how teams work, collaborate, and improve. The secret? Start with observability, foster discussions, and ensure alignment across the org.

Ready to dive in 👇

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Article of the Week ⭐

“Our greatest workplace challenges often stem from conditions we've unknowingly created. The problems we blame on our teams frequently trace back to our own blindspots. It’s never the answer we want to hear, but it’s the answer we need.”

The 10 Biggest Leadership Blindspots Based on 10 Years of Research

Leadership isn’t just about making the right calls—it’s also about recognizing the blindspots that silently erode team trust, performance, and morale. Claire shares a hard-earned truth: many of the problems we see in our teams start with us. The most dangerous challenges aren’t external; they stem from what leaders fail to see about their own behavior.

Claire Lew shares the 10 most common leadership blindspots—and how to overcome them based on her decade-long experience training hundreds of leaders and execs. Let’s dive in!

1. Withholding Context Breeds Mistrust

Absence of information trickling down to teams creates rumors and speculation. Gone unchecked they can become unhinged and produce panick and less than optimal decisions from even your top performers. You cannot share everything, naturally. But learning who to share as much context as possible with everyone without oversharing sensitive details is key to a fully transparent, efficient organization.

Fix it: If you can’t disclose details, acknowledge the uncertainty and explain why.

2. Assuming Your Team Shares Your Urgency

Product launches are especially busy. Long wishlists plus impatience create pressure and urgency as the deadline looms. It’s easy to create a roadmap that allows well-meaning engineering teams to work on what they think are important, healthy details only to chastise them that they’re missing critical features. Context about what is critical on a roadmap that is vague and large is your responsibility to communicate well.

Fix it: Before getting frustrated, check whether you've clearly explained why something matters.

3. Confusing Likeability with Trust

Chitchat and small talk for social browny points doesn’t create trust. At best it creates a lukewarm reception, at worst it wastes people’s valuable time. Trust is gained by staying true to your commitments so your teams can learn to rely on your without question.

Are you keeping the promises you’ve made to your team?

Fix it: Keep track of your commitments. If your team has to chase you for answers, trust is eroding.

4. Playing Favorites Without Realizing It

Imbalances in your relationships towards your teams will happen naturally. Being unaware of these biases create favoritism that broods the kind of resentment that gets flagged as “office politics”.

Fix it: Review for whom you allocate most of your time, opportunities, and recognition. Balance your attention.

5. Assuming Others Want to Be Managed Like You

People who are not ‘like you’ don’t want to be managed like you like to be managed. Your biases and would-be empathy can mask social expectations that simply aren’t helpful to anyone but yourself. Empathy isn’t about projecting your standards and expectations equally onto others. Empathy is using dialogue to help everyone express in what ways they are different and be accepted for it.

Fix it: Ask team members how they prefer to receive feedback, structure their work, or take time off. Adapt accordingly.

6. Believing You’re the Only One Who Can Solve a Problem

Your time as a leader is valuable. Maintaining an open-minded coaching style of leadership will keep the door open for everyone who is coachable to learn from you. Your busy schedule will incentivise you into solving problems that are easy for you quickly and without question. But that behavior robs your teams from learning opportunities where they could grow into solving the problem on their own now and in the future.

Fix it: When someone comes to you with a problem, resist solving it. Coach them through finding their own solution instead.

7. Hoping Problems Will Resolve Themselves

“Some problems will work themselves out. I thought this to myself before, especially if I've been facing a particularly draining problem. Usually, the problem that we're avoiding is the problem only we is the leader have the power to address. It's up to us to confront it.”

Fix it: Identify one lingering issue you’ve been avoiding. Take the first step toward addressing it this week.

8. Forgetting That Your Team Lacks Your Context

You have an assumption stack. Knowledge, context and little details that your position allowed to pick up, survey and compartmentalise. Your team does not have it, nor do you have sufficient capacity to communicate everything. And even if you try, some information will be lost, misinterpreted or unvalued.

Connecting regularly with your team’s day-to-day doesn’t make you a micromanager. It is crucial for retaining a deeper sense of how well your reports understand and act on information you give them. Look for opportunities where more information that only you have access to can solve certain mind gaps.

Fix it: Regularly explain why priorities exist—not just what they are.

9. Expecting Gratitude for the Work You Do Behind the Scenes

Being at the top of the chain of command is often a thankless service. Directors, CTOs and VPs often lack peers to connect with, especially in smaller organizations. Most of your hard work will involve difficult conversations with your board, founders and key clients. These interactions will be the main drain on your energy and influence your emotional state if you let it. Your teams will be mostly unaware of this, and risk becoming unsuspecting victims of larger issues afoot at the higher echelons.

Fix it: Without seeking praise provide appropriate transparency about what’s happening behind the scenes.

10. Measuring Your Worth by Being Seen as a “Good Leader”

“It's personally important to me that I'm seen as a good leader.”

Your worth does not stem from goodness. You need to show results and focus on reality over perception. Sometimes that means having tough conversations with people you care about. Putting them off may seem like an exercise in goodwilled trust and patience. But avoiding them entirely will give the false impression that busy-ness and hard effort that doesn’t produce positive outcomes is incentivised.

Fix it: Ask for candid feedback from your colleagues: What’s one assumption I make about my leadership style that might not match reality?

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Other highlights 👇

A CTO’s Guide to Measuring Software Development Productivity

Software development is under intense scrutiny. With 65% of CFOs demanding clear ROI on technology investments, CTOs must go beyond tracking technical metrics and prove how software drives growth, efficiency, and profitability. The challenge? Most engineering metrics don’t translate to business value.

The solution is to measure productivity across four dimensions:

1. Business value – Are we delivering measurable impact?

2. Speed to market – Are we turning ideas into value fast enough?

3. Delivery reliability – Are we maintaining quality while shipping quickly?

4. Team health – Are we sustaining performance without burnout?

These aren’t just abstract concepts—they determine whether software engineering is seen as a cost center or a business driver.

Enjoying your weekly brain dump? Share groCTO with your friends, your enemies, anyone who can appreciate a well-placed semicolon. We are not picky.

Shifting the Narrative: From Cost Center to Growth Driver

Data alone doesn’t convince executives. Translate engineering impact into business terms:

“By cutting delivery time by 30 days, we launched five features that increased mobile sales by 23%, while fewer production issues saved $200,000 in monthly costs.”

• Start small.

• Pick one metric, track it for a month

• Use insights to improve.

• Within three months, you’ll have data that shifts the conversation from cost control to investment in growth.

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Achieve Effective Software Delivery

70% delivery success? That's a 'C' in the software world, and frankly, unacceptable given the resources poured in. One in three projects missing- That's not just a statistic, it's a drain on your bottom line. Ready to stop throwing money at missed deadlines and dive into how to actually deliver effectively?

Read the full article by Typo.

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Great Software Teams Aren’t Just Hired — They’re Carefully Built

Andrew Winnicki reminds us of the risks of being a too passive leader in expecting perfect candidates. Or endlessly searching for the calibre of engineers who cannot exist prior to being trained within your organization. With too many choices, it’s easy to fall into decision paralysis. The reality? There’s no perfect formula—only adaptability, clear direction, and a commitment to learning from mistakes.

Have a Plan, Not Just a Wishlist

A strong engineering team starts with a deep understanding of the business. Too often, engineers focus only on the code, disconnected from the larger mission. The best tech leaders ensure that the team aligns with business goals from day one.

Beyond just hiring developers, think about what roles you actually need—design, QA, product managers? A cross-functional team reduces silos, speeds up execution, and avoids endless blame cycles.

Hiring Tip: Prioritize attitude and adaptability over a perfect tech stack match. Often the biggest problem are engineers who cannot work effectively in a team and can only perform mid-well solo.

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Find Yourself 🌻

That’s it for Today!

Whether you’re innovating on new projects, staying ahead of tech trends, or taking a strategic pause to recharge, may your day be as impactful and inspiring as your leadership.

See you next week(end), Ciao 👋

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Credits 🙏

Curators - Diligently curated by our community members Denis & Kovid

Featured Authors -

Claire Lew

, Matthias Patzak, Andrew Winnicki

Sponsors - This newsletter is sponsored by Typo AI - Ship reliable software faster.

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