The CTO Substack

The CTO’s Seven Sins

There’s a pattern among the survivors, the CTOs who make it past the two-year mark and build lasting legacies. They avoid seven specific sins that…

Oct 15 • 

Etienne de Bruin

6

The CTO’s Immutable Role

Why the World Needs to Stop Overthinking the CTO Role

Oct 9 • 

Etienne de Bruin

7

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September 2025

The CTO’s Todo List

The Four Visibility Multipliers That Create Legends

Sep 25 • 

Etienne de Bruin

9

The CTO's Cost of Goods Sold

Understanding COGS transformed how I approach sprint planning and roadmap discussions. Instead of treating all work equally, we now evaluate the…

Sep 11 • 

Etienne de Bruin

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3

The CTO's Truth Detector

The Meeting Where Everything Looked Perfect (But Wasn't). How the CTO Ratio saved my *$$ from a sinking ship.

Sep 1 • 

Etienne de Bruin

15

August 2025

The CTO's Branch Nightmare

Why Your 120-Person Engineering Team Spends 40% of Its Time Managing Branches Instead of Shipping Code

Aug 14 • 

Etienne de Bruin

4

Establishing Codebase Standards: The Foundation Your 100-Person Engineering Team Desperately Needs

The Brutal Reality of Codebase Chaos

Aug 10 • 

Etienne de Bruin

6

The CTO's Operational Blueprint

I'm sitting across from Sarah, our newly hired Director of Engineering, and she's asking me questions I should have answers to. It's her third day.

Aug 6 • 

Etienne de Bruin

6

July 2025

You’ve got 40 engineers and a real budget, why are you still leading like it’s 12 people and a whiteboard?

The Real Reason You're Feeling Buried and Edge of Burnout Might Be Because You Haven’t Upgraded Yourself to Match the Scale of Your Company

Jul 30 • 

Etienne de Bruin

3

The CTO's Signal Management

Signals are flowing through your organization right now. Which ones are you amplifying, and which are you letting drown in the noise?

Jul 16 • 

Etienne de Bruin

3

Meta's $200 Million Gamble on One Engineer Is Everything Wrong with Big Tech

Why throwing money at individual "geniuses" is the worst way to build artificial general intelligence

Jul 11 • 

Etienne de Bruin

1

June 2025

When Did You Stop Building for Joy?

Why Your Next Side Project Should Solve Exactly One Person's Problem: Yours

Jun 29 • 

Etienne de Bruin

3