🚕 CTO Compensation, Decision Drag, Opportunity Solution Trees, Performance Management, Deadlines, Predictability, Self-Awareness: TMW #365

Hello again! Welcome to the week

Last year, CTO Craft and Albany Partners teamed up to launch our inaugural Compensation Survey, followed by a comprehensive report delving into the compensation landscape across various territories, company sizes, and funding stages. 

Now, we're thrilled to present the 2nd Edition of this survey, aiming to provide an updated snapshot of the tech landscape after a tumultuous 12 months in the job market. With over 600 senior tech leaders participating in the 2023 survey, we gained invaluable insights that offered a holistic view of the tech industry. The past year has been marked by significant upheavals, including unprecedented layoffs and the ongoing effects of the "tech reset" on company valuations, share values, and exit opportunities.

CTO Craft: 2024 Compensation Survey

CTO Craft alongside Albany Partners are conducting a survey on Compensation norms across tech leadership.

In such a dynamic environment, access to real-time data on market rates and insights into strategies for stabilising uncertainty and enhancing retention within engineering teams is essential. 

This survey not only aids in individual career planning but also empowers organisations to make informed decisions that promote sustainable growth amidst the challenges and opportunities in today's tech ecosystem.

By participating anonymously, you'll gain real-time insights into market rates and an insider's perspective on strategies to mitigate uncertainty and bolster retention across engineering teams.

You can complete the survey here. Thanks very much!

Andy @ CTO Craft

Tech talent market predictions for 2024: Growth, hiring, investors and more | CTO Craft

Tech leaders are considering alternate working methods outside of a traditional permanent environment: our tech talent market predictions for 2024.

CTO CraftJames Goodrich

Conference Speaker Spotlight Q&A Sally Lait | CTO Craft

Sally Lait, the Engineering Director for Trust & Safety at Bumble Inc., discusses DEI&B in the tech sector.

CTO CraftSarah Haselwood

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft Con: London | 8-9 May 2024

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, May 2024

CTO Craft Con London 2024

CTO Craft Bytes: Beyond just an OpenAI wrapper

Nowadays, some products and features are indeed “just OpenAI wrappers”. But, to build compelling products that take advantage of GenAi models, there is still a lot of work, thought, and deliberation needed. What techniques and patterns do we need to learn to effectively unlock the potential of this revolution?

EventsRachel Thomas

CTO Craft Mixer: Amsterdam 2024

Join our community of CTOs and senior tech leaders for an informal meet-up in Amsterdam

EventsMatt Hunt

You can see all our upcoming events right here!

Reads of the Week

Continuous Integration

Every developer integrates their work into mainline at least every day.

martinfowler.comMartin Fowler

Note - Martin has just updated this for 2024! Well worth revisiting

We ran an experiment to see how easy it is to cheat with ChatGPT in interviews

We had interviewees use ChatGPT without their interviewer knowing. Here’s what happened.

interviewing.io

From our Sponsors

[From Coherence] The 9 Principles of the Perfect Startup Engineering Stack

Zach Zaro, CEO and cofounder of Coherence, outlines the 9 principles of the perfect startup engineering stack. "A well-chosen set of developer tools can be the key to moving quickly. The ideal stack should be easy to set up, affordable, and integrate services that your team already knows and trusts."

Read the Article

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Coherence, HeadChannel, Google Cloud, Jellyfish, Polly, Skiller Whale, Softwire, Sema, Uplevel, Vention, YLD, 101 Ways

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Decision Velocity & Drag — Ant Murphy

Companies that move fast make decisions fast. What takes one company a week, they do in a day. Compound that over time, and it’s a landslide.

Ant MurphyAnt Murphy

Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) Patterns | Vistaly

This article is on Opportunity Solution Tree patterns we observed working with teams to build Vistaly.

VistalyMatt O’Connell

The “errors” that mean you’re doing it right

Some things appear to be mistakes, but in fact should be celebrated as the expected outcomes of great decisions.

A Smart BearJason Cohen

A Heart-to-Heart on Engineering Leadership

Debunking the “deadwood” myth

The Manager's GuideCsaba Okrona

Culture, People & Teams

Teamwork Habits for Leaders

3 tips to make your teamwork … work.

The Manager's GuideCsaba Okrona

Self-organizing companies don’t need managers but coaches

If you are a manager or consider managing teams and organizations a significant part of your profession, the title will likely cause a feeling of rejection or a strong disagreement. I invite you to read on anyway. If you are an agile coach, your impulse might be to use this article to justify your position or highlight the importance of agile coaching. And while agile coaching can have value, I am not talking about classic agile coaching as we often see it in traditional hierarchical organizations. This is a part of it, but self-organizing companies need coaching beyond that.

Nudge by unblocked.engineeringTobias Mende

Hell is other people: performance management at Big Tech

I spent a fair portion of my adult life working for large tech companies. In all my interactions with peers, no other topic caused as much cynicism and angst as the question of performance management — that is, the labyrinthine processes the companies follow to decide who to fire and who to reward for exemplary work.

lcamtuf’s thinglcamtuf

Psychological Safety

The key to high performing teams

Fish Food for ThoughtMike Fisher

Technology, Operations & Delivery

How to talk about deadlines at work

Why it feels awkward to push back on deadlines, and how to make these conversations more approachable and effective

Wes Kao's NewsletterWes Kao

The Annual Cost of Technical Debt: $1.52 Trillion

In case you needed more reasons to focus on software quality, let me tell you that the cost of technical debt amounts to $1.52 T annually.

MediumItza Reyes

Objectively measuring “predictability”

How we’re helping our ASOS Tech teams objectively understand predictability whilst moving away from traditional metrics…

ASOS Tech BlogNick Brown

Refactoring: Making sense of the invisible

Refactoring is so underrated and misunderstood. There will never be enough books or enough blog posts about it. It’s something that we need…

BloggerDiego Pacheco

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

make something to learn more about what’s inside you

+ things that moved me

The Sublime NewsletterSari Azout

How to Stop Dwelling on Your Stress

People are feeling more stressed than ever, and it’s affecting our well-being. Many of us dwell on stressful situations, which only serves to compound the uncomfortable feelings that stress brings. The good news is that you can exit the headspace of stress. By improving your ability to stay present, you can set aside stressful issues that you can’t immediately solve, whether that’s a nagging problem at work or a personal conflict. This article covers four behavioral-science-backed techniques to help you take a break from stress.

Harvard Business ReviewJenny Taitz

Chart your Path when Forced to Adapt

I almost called this post “Who moved my cheese?” That’s the name of a book that my coworkers and I were each given one day at our software company back in the days of Y2K. It was a story about change from the perspectives of mice and humans who one day discovered that their cheese was gone. And as such, they were forced to adapt. Seeing the book in the mailboxes was one way this company “prepared us” for the organizational changes we were experiencing. Maybe it was when our company got acquired. I don’t even remember. Time erases some of this as the years pass.

Heidi Helfand's NewsletterHeidi Helfand

Develop Your Managerial Superpower: Self-Awareness

A Practical Guide to Better Communication, Decision-Making, and Job Satisfaction

Management MattersNikki Parsons

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