🦙 AI vs Productivity, State of the Union, Beautiful Constraints, Workshops, Strategic DDD, Hard Prioritisation: TMW #451

Hello hello hello, it's Monday!

Last week, we released our CTO Craft 100 report, gathering the most influential and successful technology leaders with nominations from all over the world. Alongside the 100 list, we've included some in-depth interviews with some of the winners, where they dig into topics like:

• the impact of economic shifts
• balancing innovation and governance
• surfacing security as an imperative
• the power of honest communication
• networking as an essential skill
• empathetic leadership in the age of automation

And much more. To grab your copy of the report head here for a download link.

That's it, on with the links! See you next Monday

Andy @ CTO Craft

PS: Have you registered your spot at our free online Deep Dives event? Join us to chat about Emotional Intelligence as a hard skill for technology leaders.

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CTO Craft Con - Dates for Your Diary

Deep Dives: Emotional Intelligence for CTOs

Free to attend: an afternoon of sessions with technology and culture experts on how to build Emotional Intelligence skills.

CTO Craft: Deep Dives

CTO Craft Con: The Finance Edition

Join CTO Craft Con: The Finance Edition in London - an intimate, community-centered gathering for engineering leaders to connect, learn through insightful sessions, and build real peer relationships in a supportive environment.

CTO Craft Con: The Finance Edition 2025

CTO Craft Con: London

Join CTO Craft Con: London - an intimate, community-centered gathering for engineering leaders to connect, learn through insightful sessions, and build real peer relationships in a supportive environment.

CTO Craft Con: London 2026

Reads of the Week

The AI coding trap | Chris Loy

If you ever watch someone “coding”, you might see them spending far more time staring into space than typing on their keyboard.

Chris Loy

The 2025 DORA Report: An engineering leadership perspective

Chris Westerhold, Thoughtworks’ Global Practice Director of Engineering Excellence, shares his insights on the 2025 DORA Report’s major research findings.

ThoughtworksChris Westerhold

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Regular Bloodwork & Regular Team State of the Union Docs

When it comes to personal health, we often rely on regular bloodwork as a diagnostic checkpoint.

The Healthy Engineering LeaderSebastiano Armeli

Getting More Strategic

Strategy – how to be strategic, and how to be seen as strategic – is one of my ongoing obsessions. Years ago, I read Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, and it’s guided my thinking ever s…

Accidentally in CodeCate

The beauty of constraints

Having less choice often creates more opportunity.

The Engineering ManagerJames Stanier

Care and Swear

Highly empathetic, highly demanding leaders

Fish Food for ThoughtMike Fisher

Culture, People & Teams

Values → Culture → Everything

A practical guide to recognizing, protecting, and finding the right organizational culture

It Depends: Lessons in Technology LeadershipKevin Goldsmith

Workshops that work: How to align teams & get things done

Run workshops that actually deliver. Practical tips to align teams, make decisions faster, and turn collaboration into impact.

Hyperact LogoDave Baines

How to Resolve 90% Team Conflicts

(When Two Engineers Can’t Agree)

Growth AlgorithmDaniil Shykhov

Hiring only senior engineers is the worst policy in the startup industry - Weave - X-ray vision for engineering teams

Weave combines LLMs and domain-specific machine learning to understand engineering work.

X-ray vision for engineering teams

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Beyond code generation: How AI is changing tech teams’ dynamics - Stack Overflow

Stack OverflowPhoebe Sajor

The benefits of Strategic Domain-Driven Design

A 20 years old concept that is still one of the most effective approaches to software design both at a strategic and a tactical level

Sudo Make Me a CTOSergio Visinoni

TBM 381: Stop Trying To Make Prioritization “Easy”

Hot take: We want prioritization to be hard.

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

Making your code base better will make your code coverage worse - Stack Overflow

Stack OverflowJared Toporek

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Why Engineers Feel Like Shit

The quiet burnout hiding under the cult of optimization.

The Conscious LeaderTaha Hussain

Thank you for being annoying

OR: whack ‘em if you got ’em

Experimental HistoryAdam Mastroianni

How to Be a Leader When the Vibes Are Off

...and the vibes are definitely off It feels different in tech right now. We’re coming off a long era where optimism carried the industry. Something has curdled. AI hype, return-to-office mandates, and continued layoffs have shifted the mood. Managers are quicker to fire, existential dread has replaced the confidence

Chaotic-Good Engineering ManagementJason Diller

Stop Avoiding Politics

Most engineers think workplace politics is dirty. They’re wrong. Refusing to play politics doesn’t make you noble; it makes you ineffective.

Terrible Software

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!

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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