CTO Insights Podcast

I had the pleasure of hosting Sven Peters, Developer Advocate at Atlassian to discuss Developer Experience, a topic that increasingly catches the attention of engineering leaders.

We start the discussion with some mindblowing stats from the recent Developer Experience report, released by Atlassian. According to it, 69% of developers lose eight or more hours per week to inefficiencies. 69%. That’s a full day lost weekly due to the inability to organize work in a way that empowers productivity.

Sven argues that developer joy is the single most important factor directly impacting the team's performance. Increasing it reduces inefficiencies. Or vice-versa. The bottom line is that when traditional metrics fail us, measuring developer joy will likely open perspectives that guide us toward more productive work. So, we talk about concrete actions they’ve taken at Atlassian, how they track developer joy, and what we can learn from the process.

We asked developers, "Where are you losing time?" The top answer was tech debt, followed by insufficient documentation. Then we asked leaders what they see as the main challenge for developers. Their top answer was, "They’re understaffed." It’s not tech debt, not documentation, and not slow build processes. So, they try to fix the problem by adding more people to it.

Here are the main takeaways from this episode:

- 69% of developers lose eight or more hours per week to inefficiencies and less than half of them believe leaders are aware of these issues. On the other hand, nearly 40% of leaders use lines of code and hours worked to measure performance. There’s a huge discrepancy between leadership and engineering that only contributes to the team’s inefficiency.

- Based on Atlassian’s research, Tech Debt is the number one reason developers lose time.

- Leaders often misunderstand the challenges developers face and the first step in resolving them is improving the communication between developers and leaders.

- Developer joy correlates with productivity and satisfaction. Regular surveys can help measure developer satisfaction and continued investment in improving the metrics directly contributes to increased performance.

- Empowering teams to solve their problems increases engagement and creates a culture of continuous improvement and higher work satisfaction.

- Quality assistance, a process where developers own the quality with a handful of QA experts to assist them, helps developers take responsibility for their code and improve the general team performance.

This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global talent network that connects companies with top-tier tech and product talent, ready to hit the ground running. With the ability to introduce a candidate within 24 hours and an exceptional 98% success rate on trial engagements, Adeva offers the flexibility for companies to scale their teams up or down as needed.

If you’re looking to expand your team, drive momentum in new projects, or need to backfill a role, Adeva might be the solution you need.

Visit https://adevait.com to learn more.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

I had the pleasure of hosting David Heinemeier Hansson, co-owner and CTO at 37signals. Known for its commitment to work-life balance and focusing on outcomes over hours, 37signals has set a strong example in the industry. So, I was thrilled by the opportunity to hear David’s take on team performance, especially how to achieve more with less.

In our conversation, we explore why overwork often signals poor organization and how to build a culture that enables people to accomplish more while working less. We discuss the value of flow over busyness, challenge the need for traditional metrics, and examine the unconventional approaches that have allowed 37signals to consistently deliver exceptional products for over 20 years.

“40 hours is enough. 40 hours is actually plenty. The main difficulty is finding a way for those 40 hours to connect, not to be sliced into little work moments but to have long stretches of uninterrupted time.“- David Heinemeier Hansson

Here are the main takeaways from this episode:

* Overwork is often a sign of poor organization, not commitment—and it frequently comes at the expense of productivity. Creating a culture of flow, on the other hand, boosts productivity without requiring overwork.

* “You can do big things with small teams, but it’s hard to do small things with big teams.“

* The right tools can significantly impact productivity.

* The use of the ShapeUp framework encourages autonomy and flexibility in teams. In comparison, Scrum can become overly process-driven, losing sight of the actual customer needs.

* Enterprise software often becomes overly complex due to customer demands and feature creep can lead to a product becoming worse over time.

* Short-term planning allows for more flexibility and responsiveness. Avoiding traditional KPIs and roadmaps has helped Basecamp maintain agility over the years.

* Building great software requires a commitment to quality and user experience and a sustainable business model prioritizes profitability over rapid growth.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global talent network that connects companies with top-tier tech and product talent, ready to hit the ground running. With the ability to introduce a candidate within 24 hours and an exceptional 98% success rate on trial engagements, Adeva offers the flexibility for companies to scale their teams up or down as needed.

If you’re looking to expand your team, drive momentum in new projects, or need to backfill a role, Adeva might be the solution you need.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

I had the pleasure of hosting Manuel Pais, co-author of Team Topologies - the book that reshaped how companies structure their teams for high performance. With years of hands-on experience working with global organizations, Manuel specializes in optimizing team interactions, reducing complexity, and driving value.

We discussed the challenges of traditional team structures and the importance of intentional team organization. Manuel emphasized the need for continuous evolution in organizations, understanding how the team structure and interactions between teams should evolve to enable faster flow. He shared insights on restructuring for high performance, enabling autonomy within the teams, and moving the role of management toward providing context rather than planning work.

Here are the main takeaways from this episode:

* What are the key aspects of the Team Topologies framework and how do they influence the team's performance?

* Cognitive load and its effect on the team’s performance and delivery speed.

* Intentionality in team organization as a key to high-performing teams.

* Continuous evolution vs. immediate transformation in large organizations: how can mature organizations transition to the Team Topologies framework?

* Team Topologies mindset: how can startups take advantage of the framework without formal implementation?

* Moving the role of management toward providing context as opposed to planning work.

Listen now on Apple and Spotify.

This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global talent network that connects the world’s best companies with the world’s best tech talent.

Adeva provides access to a global network of top-tier tech and product talent, ready to hit the ground running. With the ability to introduce a candidate within 24 hours and an exceptional 98% success rate on trial engagements, Adeva offers the flexibility for companies to scale their teams up or down as needed.

If you’re looking to expand your team, drive momentum in new projects, or need to backfill a role, Adeva might be the solution you need.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

I had the pleasure of hosting Gregor Ojstersek for a conversation on the less-emphasized aspects of high performance: great culture, good processes, and a positive mindset. He believes that the best teams have good relationships and can collaborate effectively, focusing on performance as a driver of the whole business, not solely on individual achievements.

With a unique stance on the notion of the '10x developer', Gregor challenges what the industry values in their highest performers. Does this unicorn that performs 10x the regular developer exist? Or is a 10x developer simply someone who knows how to pull out the best in others, so that together, they 10x the team performance? Fascinating view on individual vs. collective performance.

Tapping in his own experience as a CTO and thousands of hours of research for his Engineering Leadership publication, Gregor shares his insights on structuring teams and empowering good relationships, including curating the hiring process and setting clear expectations. He also discusses the negative impact of perfectionism, the importance of setting deadlines, and the role of managers in creating a supportive and collaborative environment.

Here are the main takeaways from this episode:

* A great culture, good process, and a positive mindset are crucial for team and individual performance.

* Building good relationships and effective collaboration are key to creating high-performing teams.

* Empathy and helping others are important qualities for developers, and the '10x developer' is someone who multiplies their impact by making others better.

* Successful hiring focuses on candidates who are team players and show a deep interest in the business and product.

* Clear expectations and regular feedback create a supportive and collaborative environment.

* Prioritizing value delivery over perfectionism leads to faster customer outcomes.

* Involving engineers in customer discussions and feedback provides a better understanding of user needs.

* Metrics are valuable for tracking progress, but they should be interpreted carefully and not used as the sole measure of performance.

Check out Gregor’s Newsletter for a deeper dive into all of this.

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This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global talent network that connects the world’s best companies with the world’s best tech talent.

Adeva provides access to a global network of top-tier tech and product talent, ready to hit the ground running. With the ability to introduce a candidate within 24 hours and an exceptional 98% success rate on trial engagements, Adeva offers the flexibility for companies to scale their teams up or down as needed.

If you’re looking to expand your team, drive momentum in new projects, or need to backfill a role, Adeva might be the solution you need.

Visit adevait.com for more information.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

Tune in for valuable insights into what it takes to succeed as a CTO with Drew Falkman, Principal at Moves the Needle, a product consulting company. Drew is also a former CTO, advisor to multiple startups, product consultant, and LinkedIn instructor whose CTO course has been watched by over a quarter million engineering leaders worldwide.

Drew emphasizes that the CTO role is, above all, a people job. As counterintuitive as it may be, Drew explains why skills like delegation, planning, and managing teams and other executives are just as important—if not more—than technical expertise. I especially appreciated his thoughts on deep work as a key driver of team productivity, highlighting that it's the CTO's job to enable it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

I had the pleasure of hosting J.B. Rainsberger, Business and Software Coach helping companies profit sooner from their software projects while empowering individuals to navigate the complex world of work. His approach is all about less stress and more energy to bring to the parts of the job that create value.

The notion of “Programming is the easy part” comes again as a focal point of the discussion as we dig into what the actual difficult parts of work are. J.B. explains how, when he’s coaching teams, the challenges he sees are almost always about people relations and rarely about code and architecture.

We explore common causes of delays and stress at work, together with his insights on improving delivery and overall performance by adjusting the working habits on an individual level.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

In this episode, I’m speaking with Natalia Tepluhina, Principal Engineer at GitLab, Vue.js core team member, and Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies. I’ve always been fascinated by Gitlab and the async culture they foster, so I was really looking forward to exploring how working asynchronously might benefit the team's performance. And Natalia had a lot to share on the topic.

The biggest highlight for me is how ruthlessly they eliminate meetings by keeping a disciplined approach toward what makes a meeting material. So much so, that even their planning is done async, not surprisingly using GitLab epics and issues. Definitely a perspective worth getting.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

I had the pleasure of hosting Kent Beck, one of the key people who shaped Software Engineering as we know it. Kent is the creator of Extreme Programming (XP) and one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto. He introduced Test-Driven Development, Software Design Patterns, and created JUnite.

Embarked on a personal mission to help geeks feel safe in the world, Kent continuously introduces concepts that aim to empower high performance while instilling a sense of safety in engineers.

In this episode, we discuss Extreme Programming and how it evolved organically from an intuitive approach for rapid delivery to a methodology that instantly made sense for teams. We explore the principles of XP along with practical approaches for implementing it within modern engineering teams. We also talk about the cost of software and how balancing the design of the software with feature development can improve the team’s performance and ability to deliver new features quickly.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

Mite Mitreski is the CTO of Signicat, the leading provider of digital identity solutions in Europe. Before Signicat, Mite was an engineering director and part of the CTO office at Klarna. He brings extensive experience in engineering leadership and great insights into high-performing teams.

In our conversation, Mite emphasizes the importance of team autonomy in driving progress at Signicat. They have certain standards, but every team is generally free to choose their own processes. Their most successful teams deploy multiple times per day, and we explore their strategy for expanding this approach across the board.

Even though they depend on manual QA due to the industry they’re in, Mite emphasizes the importance of automation and how can manual testing negatively affect the overall team performance.

According to Mite, “The moment you start using metrics for performance directly is the moment they start to be gamed.” He believes that an understanding of the big picture and good developer experience have a much higher impact on the team's performance than any metric you can choose.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

Ryan Singer is the author of Shape Up, a framework that has changed the way modern leaders approach planning and managing software development. As part of the founding team of Basecamp, Ryan deeply influenced the early software-as-a-service industry. Over 17 years, he designed features used by millions and invented processes for designing, developing, and shipping software, evolving from UI Designer to Head of Strategy. He’s now fully focused on supporting product and engineering leaders to enhance the performance of their teams by implementing the Shape Up framework.

In this conversation, we break down the framework from a practical perspective. We discuss how Shape Up flips the traditional project approach by starting with the question of how much time the team wants to spend on a project, rather than estimating the time needed.

Ryan talks about time bombs, items that in traditional agile processes tend to surprise us during development and delay the release. He explains how shaping can minimize these and how you can gradually incorporate it within your existing processes.

We debunk the most common misconceptions about the framework and cover strategies for resolving common challenges.

It’s a very insightful conversation and I hope it challenges your view of traditional software development.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

Tune in for an insightful session with Anne-Laure Huin, VP of Engineering at Mollie and former Senior Engineering Manager at Uber. In this conversation, we dive into the challenges of scaling teams and hiring new talent in a changing economic environment.

Episode highlights:

* When scaling teams with limited resources, paying attention to the candidate’s alignment with the company’s vision and values can take you further than assessing tech skills only.

* Shipping new features with limited resources requires a deep understanding of the investment vs. impact of the planned feature.

* If you’re growing with junior hires, investing in effective onboarding and mentorship programs is crucial.

* Promoting from within is a good strategy if the person is ready and well aware of the expectations of the new role. It’s important to distinguish management and individual contributor tracks as distinct career paths, each with different requirements and opportunities to grow.

* Metrics are important and they give managers insight on what can be improved. However, managers play a crucial role in understanding and interpreting metrics, and it’s important to use them in context and not blindly trust them.

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This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global talent network that connects the world’s best companies with the world’s best tech talent.

Adeva provides access to a global network of top-tier tech and product talent, ready to hit the ground running. With the ability to introduce a candidate within 24 hours and an exceptional 98% success rate on trial engagements, Adeva offers the flexibility for companies to scale their teams up or down as needed.

If you’re looking to expand your team, drive momentum in new projects, or need to backfill a role, Adeva might be the solution you need.

Visit adevait.com to get started.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com

Welcome to the first episode of CTO Insights, a podcast on engineering leadership that brings you insights from senior engineering leaders and experts on creating a culture of high performance.

Tune into the discussion with Kamil Dziublinski, CTO at Xapo Bank - a digital-first bank that makes it simple for members to bank with Bitcoin. Kamil comes from a very innovative space and brings unique insights into scaling teams and creating a culture of high performance.

This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global talent network that connects the world’s best companies with the world’s best tech talent.

Adeva provides access to a global network of top-tier tech and product talent, ready to hit the ground running. With the ability to introduce a candidate within 24 hours and an exceptional 98% success rate on trial engagements, Adeva offers the flexibility for companies to scale their teams up or down as needed.

If you’re looking to expand your team, drive momentum in new projects, or need to backfill a role, Adeva might just be the solution you need. Visit adevait.com to get started.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insights.toshotrajanov.com