What is Sudo Make Me a CTO?
The origin of “Sudo make me a CTO”
I've been in the industry long enough to have seen the famous “Make me a sandwich” XKCD comic strip when it was published originally.
I don't know how many times in my life I've typed the following:
$ sudo <command>
Surely often enough for this to become second nature.
For those unfamiliar with it, it's a command found on Unix-like systems that allows a user to execute a command with the superuser credentials.
SUDo is actually an acronym for Super User Do.
In my transition from being an individual contributor to becoming an engineering manager and then taking more and more senior roles in the tech management space, I've often found we were lacking sources to learn from, and we often resorted to either peers or our own mistakes.
Even though the situation has greatly improved over time, I believe we're still in the early stages of building clarity around the complexity of engineering leadership roles, at all levels.
This newsletter is an attempt at helping regular users, current and aspiring engineering leaders, supercharge their career growth by borrowing the superuser credentials in the form of knowledge and experience that I'm aiming to share with all of you.
Why subscribe?
My hope is that by being a subscriber of Sudo Make Me a CTO, you'll gain superpowers that will elevate you from the regular experience of having to learn the trade the hard way.
By subscribing, you will receive weekly posts with insights, thoughts, observations and stories that I have collected, directly or indirectly, through my career as an engineering leader in small and big companies.
Why become a supporter?
By updating to a paid tier, you'll support my work in writing this newsletter and will get full access to the monthly Something Big Is Happening articles, with in-depth analysis and coverage of all the worst outcomes of the GenAI industry.
About the author
My name is Sergio Visinoni, and I have more than 2 decades of experience in the realm of software engineering, 15+ of which I've spent in leadership roles at companies of various sizes and industries.
Today I operate my own business where I help companies and individuals achieve better engineering leadership via the following services:
- Fractional CTO and Technical Advisory.
- Coaching and mentoring, both for individuals and companies.
- Project-based consultancy services.
🌐 If you are interested in knowing more about my services, make sure to consult my personal website.
☎️ You can also book a complimentary 30-minute discovery call where we'll discuss together your situation and my potential support.
A note about GenAI and LLMs
Though I've been experimenting with it in the early days, I do not use any GenAI / LLMs to write my content or assist me with it.
I do use simple spellcheckers/grammar checkers to ensure I do not make silly mistakes, as I'm not a native English speaker.
Many of my articles are critical of GenAI and LLM as an industry, as I firmly believe the benefits it brings are not worth the immense human, environmental and ethical costs it requires.
For more about this, you should check out all the articles tagged with AI.