Sign in Subscribe
7 min read

🦁 DORA on AI, Ladder of Inference, The Details, Bad Days for Devs, Popular IDEs, Outputs vs Outcomes, Gratitude, Skeptoptimism: TMW #409

CTO Craft Con is coming to Toronto!
🦞
Thanks to Damilah for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - building outstanding near-shore software development teams committed to creating value.

Hello again, welcome to the week

Guess what... We’re coming to Toronto!

Mark your calendars for 27th - 28th May 2025 as we launch our next international CTO Craft Con, and our very first in North America! Tickets will be available very soon, but you can join the pre-registration list now to stay ahead of the curve: Pre-register you spot here.

Have insights or a talk you'd like to share at the event? The Call for Speakers is now open! Drop us your thoughts here: https://conference.ctocraft.com/toronto-2025/agenda/.

We can’t wait to bring the CTO Craft community to Toronto! See you soon, North America

On with the links - see you next Monday!

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 Mixer: London 2024
Join our community of CTOs and senior tech leaders for another insightful and interactive meet-up in London.
CTO Craft
CTO Craft Mixer: Gdańsk
Join our community of CTOs and senior tech leaders for an informal meet-up in Gdańsk.
CTO Craft

Reads of the Week

Data-Informed, NOT Data-Driven — Ant Murphy
Being data- driven can be an awful trap. We believe we’re collecting data that portrays an unbiased view of the world. Data that will help us make the ideal decision. After all, that’s what the data says, right? Bad news. Your data is biased.
Ant MurphyAnt Murphy
Output vs. Outcomes - Problem #4
Focusing on What Really Matters
Fish Food for ThoughtMike Fisher

From our Sponsors

From Damilah: How "partner-shoring" can support a scale-up

Near-shore partnerships offer scalable solutions, building autonomous teams and providing flexibility for tech scale-ups to adapt.

Read the Exclusive Article

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

How To Use the Ladder of Inference to Avoid Cognitive Biases
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin One of my favorite tools for thinking through thinking is the Ladder of Inference. You can use the Ladder of Inference to avoid cognitive biases or work through them better. The Ladder of Inference is especially effective to help …
Ladder of InferenceJD
Being in the details
It’s more important than ever to be in the details of what’s going on in your organization. Are you?
The Engineering ManagerJames Stanier
From engineer to head of engineering
In January 2024, my comfortable tenure at Equal Experts came to an end and I went from 6 years of being a Java/Scala/AppSec consultant to being a head of engineering at a Middle Eastern fintech. This piece of writing explores what this means. I had been a tech lead before and certainly had plenty of experience of sitting at the table where decisions are made and have never had any qualms about sticking my beak in where it might not belong.
Tales about Software Engineering
Tying Engineering Metrics to Business Metrics
Most engineering organizations I’ve worked in or led have tracked some form of engineering metrics. These range from simple metrics like…
MediumIccha Sethi

Culture, People & Teams

RDEL #70: What types of friction contribute to bad days for software engineers?
This week we cover what type and how often bad days impact software engineers, as well as their impact.
Research-Driven Engineering LeadershipLizzie Matusov
Communication Structures in a Growing Organization
When Honeycomb was a small company, All Hands meetings had announcements and discussions. Discussions mostly took place in the meeting chat, where everyone can answer anyone’s question. Betwe…
Jessitronjessitron
Engineering teams are like ADHD brains
Exploring parallels between managing a software engineering team and managing an ADHD brain
Human-Centric EngineeringSimon Holmes
Transformational cultures use the manager as a coach - Eat Sleep Work Repeat
Tiffany Gaskell outlines coaching as a route to transformational leadership Tiffany Gaskell is the co-author of Coaching for Performance, the top-selling guide to coaching first published by Sir John Whitmore the inventor of the discipline. It’s curious to consider that there was a founder of coaching, and Tiffany takes me through the history of the
Eat Sleep Work Repeat - Make Work Better

Technology, Operations & Delivery

DORA: AI boosting productivity, hindering delivery
The got released and has 30 pages dedicated to AI adoption. One particular finding stuck out to me: an increase in AI adoption was correlated with an increa…
Zarar's blog
Which IDEs do software engineers love, and why?
oftware engineers shared their favorite IDEs on social media, and the most-mentioned one by a comfortable margin was Cursor. WindSurf and Zed also seem to be getting traction at the expense of Visual Studio, and JetBrains.
The Pragmatic EngineerGergely Orosz
Your docs are your infrastructure - Stack Overflow
Stack OverflowEira May
4 Levels of Data Proficiency - Itamar Gilad
Very few companies are truly data-driven. Here are four levels of proficiency that will up your data game.
Itamar GiladItamar Gilad

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Fake It Till You Make It — To Become a Leader, Act Like One
I found, rather than waiting for my promotions at Amazon, I was more fulfilled and grew myself as a leader by pretending I had already been promoted.
Scarlet InkDave Anderson
TBM 325: Skeptoptimism – Thinking Slow, Acting Fast
Skeptoptimists assume shit will happen but are also optimistic that the team will eventually prevail.
The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler
Underrated ways to change the world
How to get a good heart unstuck
Experimental HistoryAdam Mastroianni
The unexpected benefits of gratitude and what I’m grateful for this year
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, and while I don’t come from a culture that traditionally celebrates it, I’ve adopted its spirit over the years.
The Caring Techie NewsletterIrina Stanescu

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