alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders

Get ready for the AI industrial revolution 🦸 in this CTO podcast episode featuring a roundtable of AI AllStars! So much is happening in AI, and you want to be part of it - that is why we asked Jonas Andrulis (Founder and CEO of Aleph Alpha), Rasmus Rothe (Co-founder of Merantix and its AI Campus) and Johannes Schaback (CTO of SumUp) to share with us a broad overview of what CTOs need to know about upcoming AI revolution. Turns out, we aren’t waiting for AGI - we are working on Transformative AI which is in reach for us all. Ready to transform lives with AI? Listen to find out: - ~~AGI~~ Transformative AI by 2030 🤖 - Why your AI strategy (USP💎) matters more than model choice - How to balance AI R&D 🎓with Product 💥and Enterprise Sales 💸 - AI Models: Build⚒️/Buy🛒/Pivot 🧭 - What are emerging opportunities in AI? (Spoiler: B2B SaaS especially in manufacturing 🏭) - How to champion AI 🦸 in your company - Loonshots🚀: how to cultivate innovation - + Hack to attract 🧲 AI talent to non-tech hubs Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/101-ai-revolution-roundtable-feat-jonas-andruilis-aleph-alpha-rasmus-rothe-merantix-johannes-schabak-sumup Brought to you by Storyblok (https://link.alphalist.com/storyblok_podcast)

Trust your intuition, you will gain a lot from this CTO podcast featuring Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals, a company known for having groundbreaking policies and products (Basecamp, HEY, Once, etc.). He is also a bootstrapping hero and author of multiple books (Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work). Listen to find out: - Intuitive🔮 over ‘data-driven’ 🔢decision making - Hook 🪝 vs Towel Rail 🎏: The Power of Simple, Versatile Products - CEO-CTO Relationship: How to counteract the negativity brought on by the typical push-pull 🕹️ - Why they do Customer interviews post-launch - Take-home assessments at 37Signals: paid and overloaded 🪨 + Bezos’ shares in 37Signals Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/100-jason-fried-co-founder-ceo-37signals

Lead a more humane and effective organisation with inspiration from Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies. Inspired by system design💠, cybernetics🤖 and neuroscience 🧠, Team Topologies allows CTOs to structure their teams in a more humane way that reduces cognitive load 🤯 while increasing user value 🎯. Listen to find out: - Value Flow💦: What, why and how to find it - Team Topologies🪢: The 3 team types,1 grouping, and 3 interaction modes - Why Continuous Stewardship 🛞 is important in software - Decoupling🧩 in Time: Amazon’s Secret Source +Why Team Topologies is like Pilates 🏋️ for your company goals🦸 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/99-matthew-skelton-co-author-of-team-topologies

Embrace the Site Reliability Mindset with Alex Ewerlöf, Sr. Staff Engineer @ Volvo Cars 🚗 and SRE thought leader. Understand how the different aspects of site reliability work together 🪢 and when you need a DevOps vs. Platform Team vs. SRE. Find out how to set your own Service Level Indicators (SLI), Service Level Objectives (SLO), and Service Level Agreements (SLA), as laid out by the creator of the Service Level Calculator. Listen to find out: - SRE 👷 vs. DevOps ⚒️ vs. Platform Engineering🏗️ - Service Level 101: How to set SLIs🚦, SLOs 🎯and SLAs 🤝 - Washing Machine 🧺🫧 vs. Laundry Room🫧🏘️: The Challenges of Standardization - OnCall🎧⚠️: Centralised vs. Team-based? + The unique software challenges of the automotive industry. Listen online: https://alphalist.com/podcast/98-alex-ewerlof-sr-staff-engineer-volvo-cars Read Alex's Website: https://alexewerlof.com. 40% off his book with this coupon code: https://blog.alexewerlof.com/alphalist. This episode was sponsored by DoiT.

Let’s become better Multipliers ✖️ in this CTO Podcast featuring Pat Kua, former CTO of N26 who by popular request now helps CTOs Level Up themselves and their teams. As a sought-after expert in helping ICs transition to leadership roles, Pat shares leadership gems with CTOs. Listen to find out: - Why you should fly high 🕊️and dive deep 🤿 - Why even ICs need leadership skills 🧑‍💻 - Maker⚒️ to Multiplier🌬️: What you need to unlearn when you move into management. - How to communicate: CRY Principle, Translate into Foreign Tongue 💬.. And TCP vs UDP Communication + What the long German Hiring Cycles mean for CTOs Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/97-pat-kua-cto-coach-and-founder-of-the-tech-lead-academy

Discover the power of radical transparency🧐 with Charles Gorintin, CTO of Alan (a French InsurTech) and founding force behind Mistral. He may work in a regulated space, but there is nothing typical about Alan’s setup when it comes to internal matters. Public Salary Framework ✅Searchable Board Meetings ✅4 Managers for 90 FTE✅ Listen to find out: - Why the Manager Role is split into Leads🧑‍💻 and Coaches 🪔 - How Transparent Compensation 💸works with public Salary Levels and Performance Reviews - How he hires 🤝: talent density, culture add and more specialized than him - Why he saw the need for Mistral 🇪🇺 - + How they leverage GitHub Discussions for public decision-making, ownership, and Chesterton’s Fence Brought to you by Instaffo and DoiT

Become a better CTO/CPTO with these insights from David Gebhardt, CTO (and former CPTO) of mobile.de (Germany’s largest car vehicle marketplace). Originally the Head of Tech, David evolved into CPTO, eventually leading the 400-strong Product +Tech teams before evolving business needs led him to bring on a CPO and go back to being ‘just’ the CTO (“only” 250 people). He shares why in this great CTO podcast. Listen to find out: - Why he went from CTO to CTPO and back 🤔 - Self-Efficacy as CTO ✅: How to be effective and FEEL effective - Where innovation 💡 comes from (+ mobile.de’s Innovation Days Format) + Why PHP isn’t all that bad Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/95-david-gebhardt-cto-mobilede Brought to you by Instaffo - https://instaffo.com/cto

Let’s hack cybersecurity in 2024 with Melanie Rieback, Co-founder & CEO of Radically Open Security, the world’s first not-for-profit cybersecurity consultancy with a focus on PenTesting🔏. Melanie is on a mission to fix cybersecurity consulting by putting people before profits and empowering internal teams “how to fish” 🎣. Tune in to hear about the current cybersecurity landscape from the person who not only authored a viral RFID paper (“Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?”), but also PenTested Tor, Homebrew and Greenpeace. Listen to find out: - What is the business model💸 behind Post Growth Entrepreneurship (90% of profits go towards Open Internet Initiatives via NLNet) - What to prioritise 🕵️‍♀️ in realistic internal IT policies (passwords, backups, updates..) - Internal vs. External Security Teams + Why she uses “Forgot My Password” as a “magic link” to access infrequent sites (and doesn’t remember the password on purpose) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/94-melanie-rieback-co-founder-ceo-at-radically-open-security

Embrace the technical side 🔧 of the CTO role with Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow 🖱️ who has combined technical know-how with great products on every layer of the OSI Model: from setting up HP’s first ethernet, CISCO’s early networks, building the world’s first CDN at Digital Island, and continuing up the stack to enterprise cloud ☁️ (ServiceNow), social gaming​​ 🎮 (zynga), communications 💬 (Slack), eCommerce 🛒 (Shopify) and now webdesign 🎨(Webflow). Listen to find out; - Why deep technical knowledge 🧠 allows better products - How a monolith can combine individual code ownership and great deploy times 🤔 - How to attract 🧲 talent with a ‘boring’ stack (+ Innovation Lab 101) - How to embrace the role of a pre-IPO CTO 🧑‍🚀🚀 - How to stay technical as a CTO 🧑‍💻 - Why he ships small fixes from their #UX-Papercut channel Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/93-allan-leinwand-cto-webflow BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius (https://link.alphalist.com/work) and codecentric (https://link.alphalist.com/cc)

Want to become a better manager? Then manage yourself better! From managing the time you spend managing, and all the way to managing how you give your team new tasks... Let's get real with Johanna Rothman, whom they don’t call the Pragmatic Manager for nothing. You will love her straight-talking approach to management. After almost 40 years in management, she can boil down things to sharp principles that will make you either hand pump💯, shoot the link to your buddy🤣… or smile sheepishly🫣. Yip, she got you. (Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Patterns exist because everyone does them. Which is why we need people who have been around the block to call us out 📢on them). Listen to find out: - Why you need to manage yourself to better manage others - Micromanagement: A recipe for multitasking chaos🤯 and WIP overload. - Why Gantt Charts are bad👎. Use Flow Metrics and PERT instead. - Who actually needs to be in the C-Suite (HINT: Not 25 people 🤣) - + how things have changed since the 70s: from the CTO Role to Feedback loops. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/92-johanna-rothman-the-pragmatic-manager BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius (https://link.alphalist.com/work) and codecentric (https://link.alphalist.com/cc)

Empower your team with the right type of autonomy 🚀 as we define the balance in this CTO podcast with Andy Walker, who has years of experience leadings teams at Skyscanner and Google. After 30 years in tech, Andy finally has the time to share what his hard won insights about tech leadership. You will enjoy his nuanced approach to autonomous teams, team size and work-life balance. Listen to find out: Why the more senior you are, the less decisions you should make 🤔 How to give the right amount of autonomy by career stage 🧑‍💻 (and how to have the right conversations about it 💬) How to empower 🚀and support an autonomous team What is the ideal team size?🍕 (What happens beyond Dunbar’s Law?) What motivates your team? 🤗 (SPOILER: Autonomy, Mastery🌟, and Purpose ala Dan Pink) + why Daily Active Users is the Wrong Metric 🫣 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/91-andy-walker-former-senior-tech-leader-skyscanner-google BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius and code-centric

Invest your engineering resources better by truly understanding the core problem your product needs to solve with this CTO podcast featuring Bob Moesta, co-architect of the Jobs to be Done Theory. As an engineer-turned-product-guru, Bob’s explanation of Product Discovery will delight your nerd brain 🧠 (complete with references to set theory, push-pull forces, and the problem space) while being super practical 🔧about the challenges CTOs are dealing with (like scope creep and tradeoffs). Listen to find out: - Why “Build and They Will Come” is a Myth 🫣 - SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) vs. TAM - Why engineers should be involved in product discovery 🧐 - Customer Interviews: Who to Ask and What to Ask - Why tradeoffs should be influenced by the opinions of those who already bought 🫠 - Hypothesis Building Research vs Hypothesis Proving Research + go inside Tobi’s brain to understand his purchase of his expresso machine. ☕Was it a sudden purchase or were years of ‘forces’ at play? (“The Force(s) made me buy it” 🌬️) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/90-bob-moesta-co-architect-of-the-jobs-to-be-done-theory

Craft the ideal product strategy in this CTO podcast episode with Melissa Perri, author of “Escaping the Build Trap” and “Product Operations”.Find out how to become truly product-led: from your strategy to your metrics to your tooling. Listen to find out: - How to balance qualitative 😍 and quantitative data 🧪 in product - Were the mass layoffs caused by overhiring? 🫠Is it a natural part of growth or can companies avoid over scaling? - What does the ideal product strategy 🎯look like? - What is ProductOps⚙️ and why you need it - + how to handle your fellow exec’s "greatest idea ever" (AKA Build Trap Alert) 🚧 WARNING: LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST MIGHT CAUSE YOUR PRODUCT STRATEGY TO ACTUALLY BE SUPER FOCUSED AND USED. ONLY LISTEN IF YOU ARE NOT SCARED OF RESULTS. BROUGHT TO YOU BY: [codecentric](https://link.alphalist.com/cc), [Sipgate](https://link.alphalist.com/sipgate) and [WorkGenius](https://link.alphalist.com/work).

Stay on top of your professional development with these learning and productivity tips from Luca Rossi, whose refactoring.club newsletter 🌀 is read by 50k subscribers every week. After scaling Wanderio to 25M users 🚀 as founding CTO, Luca sat down to distill his experiences and in the process created the tech leadership content 📰 he so badly needed. With diagrams. 🖼️ In this alphalist CTO podcast, Luca shares what he has learned about leadership - including the self-leadership needed to structure one's time and effectively harvest the plethora of ideas published online into action. Listen to find out: - What is the flaw in the 'State of Flow"?🌊 - Why CTOs should write more ✍️ - How he structures his day 🌞 - Should CTOs be generalists?🤔 - How he organises his tech leadership 'news clippings' 🗂️ - Tobi getting real 🫣 about recurring 1:1s Listen here: Thank you to our sponsors codecentric, instaffo and WorkGenius

Reimagine version control systems with Scott Chacon, Co-founder of GitHub and GitButler. Because, even Scott, a Git Veteran, will admit it: ``` Git is a pain sometimes. 🫣 ``` There is a serious Merge Conflict ⚔️ between how modern developers code and the workflow ordained by Git in the Linux mailing list days. Version Control Systems need to be taken apart by First Principles 🧩 so they can be better adapted to the needs of modern software teams. And this is the branch he is busy with at GitButler 🔧 - which he invited us to checkout. Pull this episode to find out: - Is the Git Protocol still useful? Does it just need a better client? 🤔 - How to maximize the benefits of centralized version control systems 🫀 - Can we stream🚿 our code and commit less? + T180 calculator hacks Is there life beyond merge conflicts? 🌈 😅 Listen here to find out: https://alphalist.com/podcast/87-scott-chacon-co-founder-of-gitbutler-and-github

Is there a nice way to downsize? Mike Fisher, former CTO of Etsy, shares what he learned when the company downscaled by 27% in 2 rounds of layoffs right before he joined. Find out how you can help your team navigate this sensitive period - both pre- and post-layoff. - How much time⏳ you lose in a layoff (the productivity cost of layoff) - Why you can’t expect to cut costs ✂️ AND grow - Why Availability 🟢 needs to be prioritised as you downsize - Layoffing off Generalists vs. Specialists 🧑‍🔬 - How they migrated to the cloud ☁️

git checkout the future of software development with Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub. In this broad podcast, we discuss everything from refactoring and scaling to the CTO/CEO role, from open source to AI as a Dev Tool. Every day Thomas delves into the development of software development - so his 🧠 was a great brain to pick. Listen to find out: - Why refactoring 🧩 will always be a part of growth. - What was it like being integrated ☂️ into Microsoft post-M&A - What are GitHub’s current challenges 👷 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/85-thomas-dohmke-ceo-github

Find out the best way to measure Developer Experience 🧑‍💻in a way that truly enables ⚡ your developers (i.e. Developer Productivity) in this CTO podcast with Abi Noda - co-creator of the DevEx Framework and founder of Pull Panda. For years Abi has been on a quest to discover what developer metrics are the key to happier and more productive developers. He tried PR Analytics (he created Pull Panda🐼 - acquired by GitHub) and DORA, before teaming up with other Developer Productivity researchers 🧑‍🔬 to create a new framework which focuses on improving developer experience (DevEx) to improve productivity. Listen to find out: - Why measure Developer Productivity? 🤷(from both CTO and developer perspective) - How to survey your developers? (Sampling, Frequency and Length)📝 - How DORA is done wrong in most companies + Why he prefers bootstrapping -🥾 but got a unique type of funding for his 4th company. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/84-abi-noda-co-creator-of-the-devex-metrics-framework BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Storyblok (https://link.alphalist.com/cms) and WorkGenius (www.workgenius.com/alphalist). TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction 05:09 His Bootstrapping Inspiration 06:29 When investment is good 09:07 Why measure developer productivity? 13:28 Pull Analytics Approach 16:47 How it backfired at GitHub 17:13 Companies Misuse of Data 19:01 Why DORA didn’t work 20:40 'Shiny New Object Syndrome' 22:10 The right and wrong way to do DORA 24:39 How Developer Metrics have Evolved 33:28 Small Teams and Measuring DX 34:32 Measuring DX in larger companies 36:09 Creating a survey (frequency, length, and sampling) 41:21 Honesty in survey responses 43:48 Tips for getting started

Get inspired about architecture - that of computers and teams - in this CTO podcast with Aviran Mordo, VP Engineering at Wix. I really enjoyed talking with Aviran about both the technical nitty gritty of powering millions of websites as well as the Wix model which - unlike the Spotify model - is still in use at its flagship company over a decade later Listen to find out: - How the Wix model works 🪗(+ hiring, personal development and communication across guilds and companies) - What is Platform-as-a-Runtime 🚄 - Why most microservices 🪢 are done wrong (and are costing you money) - How to encourage mentorship 🫶 - The infra that powers 7% of the web Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/83-aviran-mordo-vp-engineering-wix

Find out how to restructure your org using a matrix structure with Gertrud Kolb, CTO of eyeo (the company behind common adblockers). You will find out how Gertrud implemented changes across an already large organisation - from the team typologies to team communications. Listen to find out: - How to restructure using team topology 🧩best practices in a large organisation. - How to improve requirements engineering ✅ - How to gradually consolidate team communications 💬 - How ad-blockers are working advertisers to enable privacy-friendly 🎯 targeting + Behind-the-scenes at the world’s most popular adblocker Listen here: www.alphalist.com/podcast/82-gertrud-kolb-cto-eyeo --- Timestamps (1:58) - Gertrud’s Nerd Journey (8:24) - Restructuring your org with Team Topologies (15:04) - Working in an interdisciplinary & cross team way (16:00) - Navigating interdependencies with multiple products, teams and interests (21:55) - Inside Eyeo’s Matrix Organization (24:09) - Integrating new companies into the org (28:13) - Consolidating Communication Tools (33:02) - The tech behind ad blocking (41:26) - The move to Ad Filtering -- BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Zoho - https://link.alphalist.com/zoho You have probably heard of Zoho. They have been around for 27 years and now offer an all-in-one platform with over 50 mission-critical apps that offer everything from sales to marketing and HR to accounting. All in one platform- connecting the entire enterprise, ensuring communication between departments. But its the user privacy that Zoho offers that makes it stand out. Not only do they not make money by using your data for advertising, but they also have EU datacenters which is a huge win for GDPR compliance See for yourself. Come to their user conference, named Zoholics on 26th and 27th of September 2023 in Cologne, where you can sit down with experts and get to know the people behind the software. Plus, you get 25% off with the promo code OMR_CTO. Just go to: www.link.alphalist.com/zoho