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7 min read

đŸ‘©â€đŸš€ Drawing Strategy, Challenging Leaders, Blame Culture, Retaining Staff, Cutting AWS Costs, Why We Worry, Appetites vs Estimates: TMW #402

Plus our Spilling the AI Tea report, events in your area, and more

Hello again, it's Monday!

A couple of months ago we ran our Spilling the AI Tea survey, which asked how Generative AI was being utilised in readers' organisations, how they're approaching building expertise, managing compliance, etc. The results are now in, and it's time to hear what you've all been saying..

You can download your copy of the report right here:

Spilling the AI Tea | CTO Craft
The tech leadership ground truth of generative AI (GenAI) in business.In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, Generative AI is emerging asa game-changer for businesses across industries. To gain a deeper understanding of how CTOs leverage

CTO Craftmatt

We've also collated all our previous reports, including our annual CTO Compensation Surveys, right here - go take a look.

As always, we have a whole load of CTO Craft events in the pipeline - this week members will be meeting at our CTO Craft Mixer: Dublin get-together, and there will be more city-based Mixers coming in Edinburgh, Paris, Manchester and Bristol in November. It's a great way to meet other technology leaders in your area and learn about their projects and how they approach the challenges of the role.

That's it! See you next week - on with the links...

Andy @ CTO Craft

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft Con: London 2025
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 500 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, March 2025.
CTO Craft Con London 2025
CTO Craft Bytes: The Glass Cliff Female and Minority CTOs Face in Companies
Explore optimising engineering performance with strategic metrics & GenAI. Discover practical tips to enhance productivity & drive success.
CTO Craft
Free networking Mixers for tech leaders near you | CTO Craft
Join dozens of other CTOs and technology leaders in a relaxed environment for networking, chat, ideas, feedback and drinks.
CTO Craft

Reads of the Week

How to Draw a Strategy in 4 Steps
One strategic picture says more than a thousand strategic words
DataDrivenInvestorÁgoston Török
Where did the Women go? — The Leading Place
The first computer programmer was a woman – Ada Lovelace! Margaret Hamilton coined the phrase ‘software engineer’. During World War II, many female mathematicians acted as ‘human computers’ calculating ballistics by hand. During the war, many women worked as code breakers in Bletchley Park, but afte
The Leading PlaceMichelle McDaid

From our Sponsors

Near-shoring is Dead – The Future is Partner-shoring

Thinking about outsourcing? Partner-shoring is the future. Learn how this approach is reshaping software development partnerships.

Read the full insights

A huge thanks to all our sponsors and partners, who make Tech Manager Weekly and the CTO Craft community possible:

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Coherence, Damilah, DoIT, Google Cloud, Jellyfish, Plandek, Skiller Whale, Softwire, Sema, Uplevel, Vention, YLD

If you're interested in sponsoring TMW or any of our events, drop us a line at partners@ctocraft.com.

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Writing
Why leaders should take the time to write
Fish Food for ThoughtMike Fisher
How to challenge more senior leaders
In several past articles (here, here, and here), I’ve discussed the theme of how leaders can challenge, push or pull team members towards a

Management MattersTim Jackson, Ph.D.
How to Get People to Listen to You
Research-based tips to help you improve your communication strategy.
Harvard Business Review
Use These 5 Topics to Energize One-On-Ones - Leadership Freak
Use the following topics and questions to energize one-on-ones.
Leadership FreakDan Rockwell

Culture, People & Teams

Radical Accountability vs Blame Culture
Dev Leader Weekly 65
Dev Leader WeeklyDev Leader
Two Key Questions for Any Interview
Imagine an interview where you are only allowed to ask two questions. What would they be? Interviews are typically intricate processes with

MediumGrygoriy Gonchar
How Hard Should Your Employer Work To Retain You?
Recently we learned that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-hire a single AI researcher who had left to start his own company. As Charlie Brown would say: “Good grief.” 🙄 This is an (incredibly!) extr

charity.wtfmipsytipsy
Creating the perfect compensation model for your software development team
Strategies for aligning incentives with performance and growth.
Management MattersMarian Kamenistak

Technology, Operations & Delivery

The Cost Cutter Guide to AWS Savings Plans - AWS Cost Cutter
AWS can give you better discounts if you commit to use their services for a longer duration (1 year or 3 years). You get locked-in for the duration but pay far lower prices. There are multiple levers of flexibility available. The less flexibility you choose, the more discounts you can get. Savings plan is a [
]
AWS Cost CutterShubham
AI coding assistants do not boost productivity or prevent burnout, study finds
The study tracked around 800 developers, comparing their output with and without GitHub’s Copilot coding assistant over three-month periods. Surprisingly, when measuring key metrics like pull request

TechSpotZo Ahmed
Being the Glue: Managing a Zero-to-One Project - DZone
In software engineering, the role of a “Glue” is vital yet often overlooked. Explore strategies for managing team dependencies, scheduling demos, and more.
DZoneHimanshu Gupta
Appetites instead of estimates
The problem with software estimates is that they’re both entirely right and entirely wrong. Yes there’s a 3 week version of something. And a 6 week version. And a 4 month version. And a 12 month version. That’s correct. Yet, you’ll almost always be wrong whichever you pick. Because estimates aren’t walls — they’re windows. Too easy to


Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Why we worry
Akin to constant background noise, worrying means bad sleep, fatigue, irritation, and being generally unhappy. If it’s so bad for us, why do we worry?
Ness LabsAnne-Laure Le Cunff
Two minutes for mental health
Mental health and wellbeing is important . Why not spare two minutes to reset and improve your mental health with these tips.
ThoughtworksKaty White
Are we really struggling to make friends?
ALSO: productivity data for flex work, how to hire sales people and a new podcast
Make Work BetterBruce Daisley
The 4 Questions You Need to Fight Stress Every Day – Scott Cochrane
Scott Cochrane

That’s it!

If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!

https://ctocraft.com/community

Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:

https://techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper