About The Art of CTO
Building systems. Leading people.
Our Mission
The Art of CTO exists to help technical leaders navigate the unique challenges of building both excellent systems and high-performing teams.
We believe that great CTOs balance two essential skills: deep technical expertise and strong leadership capabilities. This platform provides both timely insights on current challenges and timeless frameworks for foundational decisions.
What You’ll Find Here
💡 Insights
Timely perspectives on leadership, technical decisions, and team building drawn from real-world experience.
🎯 Frameworks
Timeless decision-making frameworks for hiring, system design, technology choices, and organizational excellence.
⚖️ Comparisons
Side-by-side evaluations of databases, frameworks, and tools to help you make informed decisions.
💻 Code Samples
Production-ready code for common patterns like rate limiting, caching, authentication, and more.
🏗️ Architectures
Complete architecture templates for SaaS, microservices, event-driven systems, and other common scenarios.
📊 Case Studies
Real-world stories of scaling challenges, technical decisions, and organizational transformations.
📝 Templates
Ready-to-use templates for RFCs, ADRs, postmortems, 1-on-1s, and performance reviews.
🎤 Interview Questions
Curated interview questions with scoring rubrics for technical and leadership roles.
Who This Is For
- Current CTOs navigating scaling challenges
- VPs of Engineering transitioning to CTO roles
- Engineering Managers aspiring to technical leadership
- Technical founders building engineering organizations
- Senior Engineers considering leadership paths
Our Approach
We focus on practical, actionable content drawn from real experience. Every framework, comparison, and code sample is designed to be immediately useful in your work.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — The same is true for building strong engineering foundations.
Stay Connected
This is a growing resource. We regularly add new insights, frameworks, and practical tools. Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay updated:
Contributing
Have experience to share? We welcome contributions from technical leaders who want to help others navigate similar challenges. Reach out if you’d like to contribute content or suggest topics.
Questions or Feedback?
We’d love to hear from you. What challenges are you facing? What topics would you like us to cover?
The Art of CTO is a community resource built by CTOs, for CTOs.