The 5-Minute Startup CTO #18

All-hands, Kindness, Optimising costs

Here are your picks for this week:

🔄 Process makes perfect 

Gokul Rajaram wrote a good article on the why, how, what and when of doing an all-hands meeting. Don’t assume that, as a small startup, you don’t need these - they are incredibly useful regardless of size.

And resist the temptation to have them less frequently as your company grows. Yes, with a larger audience, they become more ‘expensive’ but they also deliver more and more value! In fact, considering communication is a challenge which grows exponentially with headcount, this is a pretty cheap solution.

👩‍💻 It’s all about people

A very good reminder for CTOs, but also something worth sharing with the whole leadership team: there are many ways to be kind to developers, and they are well worth it.

Pro tip: you don’t have to be quiet about it. It’s good to let people, everyone, know that you care.

⌨️ If it ain’t code, don’t fix it

A pretty unusual article from Segment’s CTO describing how they reduced their infrastructure costs.

Unusual in its openness and level of detail. Even if the technical details don’t necessarily apply to others, it’s insightful to see the approach they took and the lessons learnt along the way.

I hope you enjoyed this. Have a great week!

Fabrice

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The 5-Minute Startup CTO: every Sunday, 3 top insights in 5 minutes for startup CTOs and Tech Leads. Subscribe for free below, and share! 🙏

Hand-picked by Fabrice, a UK-based consulting CTO. Let me know if you need help with your startup!