The CTO’s Lost Joy
We’ve become administrators of innovation rather than innovators.
I’m twelve years old, sitting in front of my Atari 800 XL. The amber glow of the monitor bathes my face as I type what should be a simple program. All I want is for this machine to ask my name and then greet me. That’s it. Just “What’s your name?” followed by “Hello, Etienne.”
Line 10: PRINT “What’s your name?”
Line 20: INPUT NAME
Line 30: PRINT “Hello, “ + NAME
I hit RUN. The cursor blinks expectantly after asking for my name. I type “Etienne” and press Enter.
ERROR.
I stare at the screen. My brain cycles through possibilities like a broken cassette tape rewinding and playing the same three seconds over and over. The manual sits open beside me, its pages worn from my desperate searching.
Hours pass. My parents are getting ready for their evening church service, but I barely notice. I’m deep in the manual, searching for clues.
Then, around 5 PM, I find it. A small note about declaring variables. About telling the computer that NAME is going to hold text, not numbers. In Atari BASIC, you need to dimension string variables first.
Line 5: DIM NAME$(20)
Line 10: PRINT “What’s your name?”
Line 20: INPUT NAME$
Line 30: PRINT “Hello, “; NAME$
RUN.
“Hello, Etienne”
The rush of that moment – seeing my name reflected back at me by this machine I’d commanded – is pure magic. I can’t contain it. I save the program, leap from my chair, and sprint out the door. My parents are just pulling out of the driveway for church. I wave frantically, running after the car. They stop, probably thinking something’s terribly wrong.
“I did it!” I shout through the window. “The computer knows my name!”
That twelve-year-old didn’t just experience the thrill of coding. He experienced something deeper: the intoxicating moment when human creativity meets technological possibility and something new springs into existence. The joy wasn’t in the code itself – it was in the breakthrough, the discovery, the act of creation that felt so momentous it couldn’t wait.
The Trajectory We Never See Coming
Fast forward forty years. I’m running 7CTOs, a community of hundreds of technology leaders. Week after week, I sit with brilliant CTOs who’ve built incredible systems, led massive teams, delivered products that millions use. And week after week, I hear the same confession, whispered like a guilty secret: ‘I don’t love this anymore.’
While there’s no survey that specifically measures ‘creative joy’ among CTOs, the evidence is everywhere. Even regular developers spend less than one-third of their time writing new code or improving existing code Sonar. For CTOs, that creative time approaches zero. In the real world, it’s mainly those CTOs at startups and smaller operations who still spend any significant amount of time coding Raconteur. As companies grow and the CTO role expands, the keyboard gets replaced by the calendar.
We’ve become administrators of innovation rather than innovators.
The progression is predictable. You start as that kid with the computer, creating things because you can’t not create them. Maybe you’re coding, maybe you’re designing systems, maybe you’re solving problems no one else can see. Every challenge is a puzzle. Every puzzle is joy.
Then you get good. Really good. You understand not just how to build but how to architect. You see patterns others miss. You can translate between technical and business worlds.
And so the organization does what organizations do: they promote you.
Suddenly you’re CTO. The title feels heavy, important. Your parents finally understand what you do for a living. The salary reflects your value. But something else happens, something nobody warns you about.
That kid who couldn’t contain their joy, who had to run down the street to share their breakthrough? That kid starts to disappear.
The Three Lies We Tell Ourselves
I’ve identified three stories CTOs tell themselves to justify their disconnection from creative work:
The Responsibility Story: “I have 50 engineers depending on me. I can’t indulge in hands-on exploration anymore. That would be selfish.” This is the martyr’s path. You sacrifice your creative soul on the altar of leadership, believing that suffering equals dedication.
The Evolution Story: “This is just career progression. You can’t stay in the weeds forever. I’ve evolved beyond that.” This frames disconnection from creativity as growth, when often it’s just displacement.
The Temporary Story: “Once we get through this quarter/funding round/product launch, I’ll have time to explore and create again.” This is perhaps the cruelest lie, because there’s always another quarter, another crisis, another reason to delay.
Technology develops at a pace unmatched by any other construct. What is created one day can be broken, fixed, redesigned and expanded the next. Yet the very leaders who should be most connected to this creative destruction are the ones most removed from it.
Press Any Key to Continue
Remember those words? They appeared on every game, every program, every adventure you loaded on those early computers. After the interminable wait while the cassette deck squealed and chirped, loading your program into memory, these five words appeared: “Press Any Key to Continue.”
No restrictions. No “Press Enter” or “Press Space.” Any key. Your choice. Your path forward.
This phrase has become my philosophy for CTOs reclaiming their creative spark. Because somewhere between your first breakthrough and your latest board presentation, you forgot something crucial: you still have choices. You can still press any key.
The three key elements in enduring motivation are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is having a measure of control over what we do and how we do it. Mastery is making progress and getting better at something that matters, according to Daniel Pink’s research on human motivation.
Most CTO roles systematically strip away all three. Your calendar is owned by others (goodbye autonomy). You’re too busy managing to maintain technical mastery (goodbye expertise). And your purpose gets lost in quarterly objectives and OKRs that feel disconnected from why you fell in love with technology (goodbye meaning).
But what if we could reclaim all three without abandoning our responsibilities?
The Integration Path
Over the past year, I’ve worked with CTOs who’ve successfully integrated creativity back into their leadership. They didn’t quit. They didn’t neglect their duties. They pressed a different key.
Marcus, CTO of a 200-person fintech, instituted “Innovation Mornings.” Every Tuesday and Thursday, from 6 AM to 10 AM, he explores. Sometimes he prototypes with new technologies. Sometimes he experiments with radical architectures. Sometimes he builds proof-of-concepts that will never see production. The key is that he creates. His team noticed something: his afternoon strategy sessions became more visionary. His technical decisions carried more weight. He wasn’t just managing technology; he was living at its edge.
Sarah, leading engineering at a healthcare startup, took a different approach. She owns one technical exploration per sprint. Not managing it – owning it. Sometimes it’s investigating a new AI model. Sometimes it’s prototyping a complete reimagining of their architecture. “I need to feel the frontier of what’s possible,” she told me. “How else can I guide us into the future?”
Research by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan found that intrinsic motivators, like autonomy and competence, boost performance more than external rewards. These CTOs prove that maintaining hands-on involvement with technology isn’t indulgent – it’s essential for visionary leadership.
They discovered what that twelve-year-old me knew instinctively: the joy isn’t in having created something; it’s in the act of creation itself. It’s in the discovery, the breakthrough, the moment when possibility becomes reality.
The Five Levels of Technical Leadership Freedom
Through observing hundreds of CTOs, I’ve identified five levels of freedom in technical leadership:
Level 1: Insert Coin – You’re completely reactive. Every moment is owned by others. You’re surviving, not thriving. Your calendar looks like Tetris blocks with no gaps. You haven’t experienced a technical breakthrough in years.
Level 2: Restricted Input – You have some control, but only within rigid boundaries. Maybe you read about new technologies on your commute. Maybe you occasionally review architecture decisions. But exploration feels stolen, not owned.
Level 3: Function Keys – You’ve carved out specific times for creative technical work, but it’s scheduled and structured. It’s progress, but not yet joy. You’re touching technology but not dancing with it.
Level 4: Shortcuts Enabled – You’ve integrated creation into your leadership style. Your technical explorations enhance your CTO role rather than competing with it. Breakthroughs are becoming regular occurrences.
Level 5: Press Any Key – Complete integration. You don’t choose between being a leader and being a creator. You’ve designed a role where both coexist naturally. That twelve-year-old’s joy has returned, evolved and matured.
Most CTOs I meet are stuck at Level 2, believing that Level 5 is a fantasy. It’s not. It’s a choice.
Now What? Your Next Key Press
If you’re reading this and feeling that familiar ache – the one that reminds you of who you were before you became who you are – here’s your path forward:
Week 1: The Joy Audit Track every moment in your week when you feel energized versus drained. Don’t judge it. Just notice. When do you feel like that kid who ran to church? When do you feel like you’re wearing a suit that doesn’t fit?
Week 2: The Experiment Block three hours. Just three. Use them to explore something technical that fascinates you. Build a prototype. Experiment with a new technology. Create something utterly impractical but intellectually thrilling. Notice how you feel after. Notice if you want to run down the street and tell someone.
Week 3: The Integration Find one aspect of your CTO role that could benefit from hands-on technical exploration. Not everything – just one thing. Maybe it’s personally prototyping the next major architecture shift. Maybe it’s spending a morning experimenting with AI models that could transform your product. Make it official. Put it in your calendar. Call it “Strategic Technical Research” if you need to justify it.
Week 4: The Declaration Tell your team what you’re doing and why. Not as an apology, but as leadership. “I’m a better CTO when I stay connected to the edge of what’s possible. Here’s how I’m going to lead from the frontier.”
You might face resistance. Your board might question why you’re “playing with technology instead of managing.” Your team might wonder if you don’t trust them.
Let the results speak. Leaders who maintain their creative practice don’t just survive; they thrive. They bring energy instead of exhaustion to their teams. They make better strategic decisions because they understand what’s possible, not just what’s practical. They inspire through excitement, not just expertise.
The Permission You’ve Been Waiting For
That twelve-year-old staring at the Atari screen didn’t need permission to experiment, to fail, to spend six hours on four lines of code. He didn’t need permission to run down the street and burst into church with his joy. Somewhere along the way, we started believing we needed permission to feel that alive.
You don’t.
The CTO must have a technical background. But this does not mean they need to come from a conventional computer science education. What matters isn’t how you stay connected to technology’s creative edge – what matters is that you do.
You can be an exceptional CTO and a creative technologist. You can lead teams and explore new frontiers. You can set strategy and chase breakthroughs. You can attend board meetings and still be the person who runs down the street shouting “I did it!”
The computer is still waiting. The cursor is still blinking. New technologies are emerging every day, each one a doorway to that same magic you felt forty years ago. And despite what your calendar says, despite what your role demands, despite what everyone expects – you can still press any key to continue.
The question isn’t whether you have the time. It’s whether you have the courage to reclaim what was always yours: the uncontainable joy of creation.
Press any key to continue.
What key will you press today?