š Omniscient Leaders, Debts, Resisting Re-orgs, Punishing Top Performers, Bad Backlogs, Doing Stupid Things: TMW #424
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Thanks to Vention for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - the secret weapon connecting business leaders with the expertise they need to innovate boldly, grow faster, and scale smarter
Hello again, it's Monday!
We're launching a weekly question series on TMW and the CTO Craft Slack Community to gather insights on key issues impacting technology leaders.
- Weekly Questions: We'll post a new question each week to stimulate discussion.
- Community Insight: We aim to collect diverse perspectives and experiences.
- Expert Participation: Subject matter experts, like Hywel Carver (for our debut!) from Skiller Whale, will join the conversation in Slack on Friday.
- Results & Discussion: We'll share the results in the #ctocraft-announcements Slack channel, directing you to the relevant community channels for further discussion.
Here's the first of the weekly questions...
If you're in the CTO Craft Slack, we'll be discussing the results with Hywel and the rest of the community on Friday, so keep your eyes peeled!
On with the links, see you next week...
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Events
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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.
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Find out how businesses can foster a culture of continuous learning to future-proof the workforce in a landscape of rapidly changing new technologies.
Want to meet other TMW subscribers and CTO Craft Community members in your city? See all upcoming Mixers in cities around the world here.
Reads of the Week
Neurodivergence in software engineering
Creating genuinely inclusive workplace experiences where we all have the conditions to perform at our best
John Durrant
What engineers get wrong about communication
The doās and donāts of effective communication for product engineers
Ian Vanagas
From our Sponsors
Key takeaways from Ventionās 2025 CTO Craft Con presentation
AI is reshaping how businesses operate, but without the right guardrails, it can bring more risk than reward. Ventionās CTO, Glyn Roberts, breaks down a smarter, safer approach to AI adoption.
If you're interested in sponsoring TMW or any of our events, drop us a line at partners@ctocraft.com.
Leadership, Strategy & Business
The Hidden Ways Leaders Unintentionally Punish Their Top Performers
How to identify the subtle behaviors that drive away your top performers, and what to do instead
Claire Lew
How Not to Disagree
Disagree & Commit is easy to say but hard to do. Here is what happens if you do not.
webmasterboz.com (Andrew Bosworth)
The Omniscience Expectation and the Mardenfeld
For many leaders the hardest job they have is getting comfortable with not knowing. It is natural to feel like you have to understand everything about the area that you lead. And thatās a feeling that often cascades down through hierarchies. My boss expects me to be able to answer an arbitrary question on the spot, in order to accomplish that I need to be an expert on an increasingly large number of topics. I accomplish this by asking for more and more detailed information from my team, perpetuating this omniscience expectation.
Kellan Elliott-McCreaDebts, Tech and Otherwise
While people debate the validity of
Ted Neward
Culture, People & Teams
Changing Culture
How to find out what your culture is, what it should be and how to change it.
Jeff
Resisting the Reorg Itch
Donāt fall for the temptation of bold hard to revert changes. Take an experimental approach inspired by the principles of agility instead.
Sergio Visinoni
One in seven female managers say their gender has made it harder to succeed
Female employees in the UK, particularly at management level, are twice as likely to see their gender as a barrier to success than their male counterparts.
Management-Issues
Eng org seniority-mix model.
One of the trademarks of private equity ownership is the expectation that either the company maintains their current margin
and grows revenue at 25-30%, or they instead grow slower and increase their free cash flow year over year.
In many organizations, engineering costs have a major impact on their free cash flow.
There are many costs to reduce, cloud hosting and such, but inevitably part of the discussion is
addressing engineering headcount costs directly.
Technology, Operations & Delivery
Why Backlog Management Is Dangerous for Most Teams
The more items you have in the backlog, the less you can innovate.
David Pereira
How Iāve run major projects
focus ā¢ maintain a detailed plan for victory ā¢ run a fast OODA loop ā¢ overcommunicate ā¢ break off subprojects ā¢ have fun ā¢ bonus content: my project management starter kit
joe cubedHow to Track and Document Known Issues Effectively in Software Projects
Selecting The Best Approach To Collect And Document Frequent Issues For Improved Troubleshooting
Daniel Idaszak
The Hidden Technical Debt Thatās Killing Your Codebase (And How to Find It)
Ever stare at your codebase and wonder if your latest changes are making things better or worse? Youāre not alone.
Mike Godfrey
How To Create the Generative AI Policy You Needed Yesterday
Generative AI is in more tools than you probably realize. Glyn Roberts of Vention offers a framework for establishing your organizationās GenAI policy.
Jennifer Riggins
Stress, Wellbeing & Growth
Want Honest Feedback From Your Team? Do Stupid and Embarrassing Things
Musings on living in an information bubble and finding our blind spots as leaders and managers
Jimmy Ho
Tips For Better Interactions
A collection of practical advice.
Stay SaaSy
Stories
When and how to tell them
Mike Fisher
Thatās it!
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https://ctocraft.com/community
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Have an amazing week!
Andy