Jul 6, 2026 9 min read

🦔 Rise of the CAIO, AI vs Team Motivation, Handling Skepticism, Rewrites, the New Prioritisation, Employee Burnout: TMW #489

CTO Craft Con: Fintech 2026 - announcing our keynote speakers

🥖

This week's TMW is sponsored by Pensero - giving leaders objective visibility into delivery, quality, and AI impact across the organization.

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the week!

CTO Craft Con: Fintech 2026 Keynotes

We're thrilled to announce two keynote speakers who are redefining the future of fintech and will be taking the stage for CTO Craft Con: Fintech this November!

Harry Jell, CTO, Yonder, one of the most interesting product stories in UK fintech right now - a rewards credit card growing 3x year-on-year, backed by NatWest, and the first in the UK to blur the line between debit and credit. Harry is building the engineering culture and systems to match that ambition. He’ll be bringing that perspective to the stage in November.

Jennie Woods, VP Engineering, Funding Circle, the UK-listed SME lending platform, where she leads all aspects of product engineering. With broad experience spanning engineering strategy, platform architecture, and cross-functional product delivery, she is currently driving Funding Circle’s shift towards an AI-native product development life cycle. Jennie specialises in translating emerging technology into practical, scalable capability at the intersection of financial services and modern software delivery. She is passionate about building high-performing engineering organisations that are equipped to thrive in an AI-first world.

Join the conversations, you won't want to miss this.

From AI Resistance to Readiness

On Wednesday this week, Carol Palombini and I will be sitting down to discuss how leaders are supporting teams with the rollout of AI in the SDLC, how to support skeptics and resistance to change and how to ensure the culture is ready for the change. If you're facing pushback from your engineers, definitely tune in - there will be time for Q&A!

That's it, let's look at some links....

Andy @ CTO Craft

Ps. If you're in an engineering leadership role, you absolutely need to be on top of the latest data on compensation and long-term incentives - have a look at our recent Compensation Report for all the latest insights.

CTO Craft Con - Dates for Your Diary

AI-enabled engineering organizations need different KPIs

Why AI efficiency and cost visibility matter more than usage.

Lines of code used to measure output. Now they measure how much code you'll have to maintain. When developers generate code in minutes, activity stops meaning anything, and AI amplifies activity faster than any org can validate impact. Dave lays out the five KPIs that actually matter now, including the quality tax: high output with growing instability isn't efficiency, it's deferred cost.