Coding is Making Me a Better CTO Advisor

After an intensive few weeks of late-night C# coding binges, I'm closing a chapter on an assignment that has deeply enriched my skills as a CTO advisor. As a big picture strategist, I spend most days in the hazy conceptual realm of cloud architectures and machine learning blueprints. This hands-on work provided some much-needed grounding by forcing me to bridge theory with practical execution.

Plunging back into hardcore coding had me feeling like a wide-eyed newbie dev again. I'd forgotten the thrill of those 4am “Eureka!” moments when finally fixing a stubborn bug (some worse than others!!). Of course, the elegant C# and .NET frameworks offer way more guardrails than the messy C++ code I cut my teeth on many moons ago.

Still, while modern languages accelerate development, I was reminded that coding requires meticulous mental muscle. Working directly in Visual Studio unearthed so many granular challenges engineers face daily that we lofty architects easily overlook. Just contending with code reviews and test coverage opened my eyes to how we can better support our developers.

Indeed, my hands-on foray will make me a sharper CTO advisor by allowing me to rapidly prototype concepts as tangible working software. In client strategy sessions, I can now complement high-level diagrams with real, living code demos I’ve built myself. This brings ideas vividly to life instead of just waving hands around theoretical models.

The Value of Getting Your Hands Dirty as an Advisor

As a CTO advisor, being able to sling real code is like having a superpower. It enables me to complement high-level architectures with tangible working software prototypes. This can be incredibly clarifying for executives trying to envision how sweeping strategic plans translate into concrete outcomes.

For instance, when consulting with a manufacturing CTO on an AI-driven predictive maintenance roadmap, I could fire up Visual Studio and code a prototype machine learning model on the spot to predict equipment failures from sensor data. Even a simple proof of concept would provide a glimpse into the art of the possible with industrial IoT and ML.

Similarly, for an insurance CTO exploring ways to combat fraud, I could rapidly develop a demo fraud detection application with C# and Azure ML to identify suspicious claims using AI. This would validate how advanced analytics can help boost loss prevention in a real-world context specific to that insurer.

Or with a retail banking CTO looking to personalize customer marketing, I could pull sample customer transaction data into a Jupyter notebook and experiment with segmentation models to group customers with similar behaviors. This would make vivid how ML can uncover insights to improve targeting.

For a pharmaceutical CTO aiming to leverage RWE and AI for drug discovery, I could create a prototype analysis pipeline to extract insights from scientific literature. In minutes, I could process sample text with natural language processing to showcase deriving knowledge from unstructured data.

The ability to spawn concepts live through code can really accelerate an advisory engagement compared to hand-wavy visions. Stakeholders develop intuitive comprehension when they can interact with software instead of puzzling over convoluted strategy decks. I can modify prototypes interactively during sessions, evolving demos to align with new directions.

In short, my coding skills allow me to come to sessions equipped to build real things, not just pontificate about ideas. I can take stakeholders' existing pain points and start addressing them hands-on, bridging strategy with execution. This makes the way forward tangible.

Staying Close to the Metal as an Advisor

In my role as a CTO advisor focused on bleeding-edge technology, it would have been easy to get detached from hands-on building. Most strategizing occurs in the clouds, not the coding trenches where rubber meets road.

But realizing just how much nuts-and-bolts knowledge I’d lost reignited that early-career passion for programming. I felt like Neo in The Matrix seeing code rain down when I opened Visual Studio again. Modern languages like C# made so many old lessons come flooding back. Just watching a simple console app execute made me determined not to lose those hands-on skills despite occupying lofty advisory roles atop ivory towers.

Expanding my coding abilities ensures I never lose touch with the gritty on-the-ground details and challenges of architecting complex enterprise systems. It grounds me in the practical realities that we strategic dreamers sometimes drift away from. Staying hands-on helps me provide balanced guidance on both vision and application.

And frankly, nothing beats the dopamine rush of creating something tangible that executes your ideas line-by-line. The intellectual challenge of coding keeps me passionate about the details underlying transformative trends. As much as I love pontificating about quantum computing, getting hands dirty building software still provides that irresistible maker's itch to create.

Why Coding Will Make You a Better Leader

Beyond practical software skills, my coding sabbatical also unearthed some universal leadership lessons that apply far beyond pure engineering:

Persistence Pays Off - Like any complex skill, coding requires tolerance for failure. Bug-squashing marathons taught the value of relentlessly working problems vs. giving up at the first roadblock. Progress isn’t always linear - breakthroughs come to those who persevere.

Celebrate Small Wins - Hitting “debug” without crashing is cause for celebration! Coding's frequent micro-accomplishments reminded me to celebrate small wins that eventually add up to success. Stakeholders need this too.

Embrace Continuous Learning - New frameworks arrive constantly in tech. Coding requires nonstop learning to stay relevant. As leaders, we need the same hunger to keep expanding our skills rather than resting on laurels.

Keep Exploring - There are infinite ways to solve problems in code, and always new languages to learn. Coding instilled in me an insatiable curiosity to keep exploring as the key to innovation.