What Is A Fractional CTO?

Yo!

Todd?here with the first edition of The Technical Leader...

The ONLY newsletter that keeps you informed on the best ways to scale your technical expertise to make an impact and income?without?burning out or losing touch with the tech.

As I was growing my career in Silicon Valley, I realized there were diminishing returns past a certain point of investing in more of my technical ability.

I had reached a senior software engineer status, but there was only so much I could do as an individual contributor.

I got much more leverage and impact with each unit of work when I focused on investing in my non-technical skills and business sense so I could fully apply my technical expertise and work through others, not just myself.

Maybe you’ve had similar thoughts?

• You might want to take the entrepreneurial route and start your own company.
• Maybe you want the variety and fun of helping as many great startups as possible, like a serial startup CTO.
• Or maybe you just want to grow your career faster and make the leap from Individual Contributor to Engineering Leader without learning all of the painful lessons the hard way.

Regardless of your reasons for reading this weekly newsletter, I can promise you 1 thing:

I’m going to help you get savvy on all of the critical knowledge that ISN’T the technical stuff.

You can read about the latest hot code frameworks on Hacker News and a million other places.

But THIS is your source for the non-technical knowledge that?actually?makes a difference as you grow in your career.

Stuff like:

• How you bridge the gap between the business needs and the engineering side
• How you build a team and culture to deliver the best results
• How you get buy-in from stakeholders who own decisions

Odds are, you’re already an expert when it comes to writing code...

But there’s much more to success when it comes to being a great Engineering Leader and I’m on a mission to help more tech people get comfortable with their non-technical skills.

Anyway, here’s what’s in today’s edition of The Fractional CTO:

• ???Trend of the Week: the rise of the Fractional CTO (and what is it?)
• ???Opportunity of the Week: Helping you build your career beyond the confines of 1 company

Keep reading for the full details and shoot me a DM when you’re done to let me know what you think?

Trend of the Week

Searches for Fractional CTOs go up and to the right.

Here we are with a chart from a modest but growing need for Fractional CTOs.

This graph comes from Exploding Topics, which is consistently 6-12 months ahead of news I read elsewhere. They never miss.

So... what exactly IS a Fractional CTO?

Here’s Exploding Topics’ definition:

Chief technology officer hired on a part-time basis. This gives lower-budget businesses access to senior executives.

Over the last 2 years, I’ve been helping startups as a Fractional CTO after I noticed I was solving the same problems over and over while at the same time, a countless amount of non-technical startup founders need those problems solved with the right technical guidance.

Becoming a Fractional CTO is a super fun (and lucrative) way to make the broadest impact with your technical knowledge.

Last month, Dashwire wrote up a quick explainer too that you might want to?check out.

Want to know more??Book a call with me?and I’ll explain how being a Fractional CTO works and how I’m helping other people do the same thing in their careers.

Opportunity of the Week

Early enrollment of our new Tech Leaders program ends this month.

Based on the demand and comparison with professional development programs, we’ll probably be doubling the cost of investment.

So now is the time to join us while we’re still in beta.

I’ve had a lot of questions about what we do to help you grow your impact and income (and career) so here’s the elevator pitch if you’ve been on the fence about joining our 6-month Mentorship Mastermind.

• We help you grow your nontechnical skills like proactive communication, decision making and problem solving, business logic mapping, etc.
• We host weekly mentorship mastermind sessions on Zoom with a group of Fractional CTOs and Engineering Leaders from around the globe to learn from each other
• We help you develop your ideal career path and then help you with the next steps to achieving it, whether its starting your own business or a promotion to your ideal job
• We feed you new opportunities with upcoming startups all over the world
• We provide great developers anywhere in the world to grow your teams

If this sounds good to you, make sure you message me ASAP so I can save you a spot in our group.

Well, that’s it for now.

See you next week!

— Todd

Check out our?website.