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🐢 CTO Compensation, Strategy Frameworks, Hitting OKRs, Ownership, Psychological Safety, No Bugs, Failing a Lot: TMW #414

Take part in our annual Compensation Survey!
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Thanks to Tana for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - AI-native knowledge management used by builders and managers in some of the world’s leading tech teams.

Hello again, welcome to the week!

Those of you who've been around a while will remember last year's CTO Compensation Survey, created in partnership with our friends at Albany - hundreds of leaders from the CTO Craft community got involved, and the resulting insights were impactful and eye-opening. Now we're ready to refresh our compensation data set, and we're asking once again for you to help by submitting your details anonymously.

This year, we'll be digging a bit deeper into:

  • Compensation: Market rates and trends, LTIPs and ESOPs
  • Retention: Key drivers and strategies
  • Job Tenure: Industry benchmarks

Your details are invaluable - please do get involved! A massive thank you in advance:

https://ctocraft.typeform.com/to/tDySyCuY

On with the links!

Andy @ CTO Craft

Reads of the Week

TBM 332: The Last Strategy Framework You’ll Ever Need
Strategy isn’t inherently hard because of frameworks or because we somehow lack a strategy definition. Yes, skill matters. Knowing which questions to answer, and when, and how, matters. If you show someone new to strategy a Wardley Map, you’ll see someone’s head explode.Note: A big thanks to my co-worker John May for brainstorming some of these ideas.
The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

CTO Craft Events

Don't forget, as a TMW subscriber you have access to the Member Pricing for upcoming CTO Craft Con events.  You can unlock membership pricing by using the following access codes in the checkout when purchasing tickets:

CTO Craft Con: London 2025 - Community-Spring-25
CTO Craft Con: Toronto 2025 - Community-Toronto-25

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 Con: Toronto 2025
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 200 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 Toronto, 2025.
CTO Craft Con: Toronto 2025

From our Sponsors

[From Tana] Managing people takes time. Managing information shouldn’t.

AI-powered notes that combine a knowledge graph with object-oriented programming—so you can automate the busywork and stay on top of the important things. Built by devs that believe there is a better way to work with information. CTO Craft members get a free 14-day trial and exclusive early access.

Skip the 150,000 waitlist and try Tana for free

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, Tana, 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

Great engineering leaders create leaders
This is the secret of high-performing engineering orgs!
Engineering LeadershipGregor Ojstersek
Hitting OKRs vs Doing Your Job
In Engineering, quarterly OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) can feel like a duplication of product planning. Basically, they say “Ship the Roadmap.” What new information are they comm…
Jessitronjessitron
Managers Make Teams Deliver More Value, Not Deliver More Output
True productivity for a team is measured by the value created, not the work completed. The job of a manager is to focus on the value hidden behind the piles of work.
Scarlet InkDave Anderson
Risk Management & Strategy
The Centrality of What Would Have to be True
MediumRoger Martin

Culture, People & Teams

How to create a culture of ownership in your engineering team
Ownership doesn’t happen by chance -> it’s built through deliberate actions that leaders often overlook!
Engineering LeadershipGregor Ojstersek
How To Avoid Bad Startup Culture
If you are not paying attention to your startup culture, I have news for you: you are already building a culture into your company. Chances are that is not the culture you want. Every company has a culture. It is a summation of all the habits and practices that make up the work. It is every choice, good or bad, made by every person involved. Every action sets a precedent, a “how we do things here.” This is how we are wired. We are naturally social beings and are strongly predisposed to fit in to the group we find ourselves in, and to emulate their behaviour. This reinforces culture further, and compounds when more people are involved. A culture grows like plants in a garden. You cannot stop the life from growing, but you can decide how and where it grows. Left unattended, weeds will grow alongside the flowers. The key is recognising this and putting in the work to shape it. Here is a quick primer on how to do the minimum to avoid bad culture, and how to get good culture going with a little attention every so often.
https://chrismdp.com
What makes strong engineers strong?
Self-belief, pragmatism, speed, and technical ability
sean goedecke
Starting the New Year with Global Leadership Resolutions: Building a Foundation of Psychological Safety
During Katie Anderson’s #JapanStudyTrip this past November, a participant shared an observation with me that resonated deeply: “The biggest challenge is
Lean BlogMark Graban

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Bugs Optional?
Almost no bugs in The Forest?
Software Design: Tidy First?Kent Beck
Dear IT Departments, Please Stop Trying To Build Your Own RAG
IT departments convince themselves that building their own RAG-based chat is easy. It’s not. It’s a nightmare.
Towards AIAlden Do Rosario
Do you really need to hire a QA or build a QA team?
The inevitable question facing any software start-up CTO or VPE
MediumHeemeng Foo

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You
Failure is baked into the human experience. So why are we so terrible at dealing with it? Fear of judgment and the stigma that our failures reflect poorly on us discourage us from trying new things. Negative self-talk and rumination convince us that our failures mean we’re incapable and undeserving. But failure is typical in all professions.
Nir and FarNir Eyal
Setting yourself up for success in 2025
By infusing clarity, purpose and focus in everything you do
The Caring Techie NewsletterIrina Stanescu
Assertive communication: What it is and how to do it well - Work Life by Atlassian
Assertive communication helps you express your thoughts and feelings while still being respectful of others. Here’s why it matters and how to get it right.
Work Life by AtlassianKat Boogaard

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