https://leegold.com/tags/fractional-cto/ Recent content in Fractional CTO on Lee Goldsworthy Hugo en-au Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/2026-is-the-year-of-feeling-like-youre-falling-behind/ Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/2026-is-the-year-of-feeling-like-youre-falling-behind/ I’m calling it: 2026 is the year of Feeling Like You’re Falling Behind™. “Who thinks they’re falling behind right now?” I asked on Thursday. The room was comprised of tech folks: A mix of CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Founding Engineers, and Senior Engineers. They all had prior experience doing AI Engineering, yet every single one of them (including me) put their hand up. The better question is “What are you going to do about it? https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-is-not-vibe-engineering/ Tue, 05 May 2026 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-is-not-vibe-engineering/ The Register This isn’t a Technology story about the dangers of AI, this is a Risk Management story about the dangers of overconfidence. For the last week, we’ve been inundated with hot takes about how “Claude deleted PocketOS production database”. Of course Claude deleted their entire production database (or something similarly damaging), it was just a matter of time. The way this is being discussed misses the point entirely. https://leegold.com/posts/how-i-run-zero-inbox-as-a-fractional/ Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/how-i-run-zero-inbox-as-a-fractional/ As a Fractional, my Attention Management has to be brutal, and a friend recently asked me to describe how I run my Zero Inbox. it’s a blend of Eisenhower Matrices and recurring Ceremonies I use to manage the noise from working with 4-6 startups at a time (often with inboxes, calendars, chat and project tools for each), so I figured I’d share it here. Core Principle: “I should only see things I need to do that Hour, that Day, or that Week (in that order), everything else should resurface at the right time without me thinking about it” https://leegold.com/posts/a-30-second-risk-check-before-you-click-i-accept/ Mon, 06 Oct 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/a-30-second-risk-check-before-you-click-i-accept/ I get FOMO when looking at the promised productivity gains from all these amazing-looking new platforms I hear about every week (each bearing enticing promises of automating this or that generic administrative task), but I find myself regularly holding back from using them against the backdrop of not opening myself up to unreasonable security and privacy risk. Here’s a practical example of how I did a 30 second risk sanity check for one I was about to try out earlier today that wanted access to my inbox, which is a big red flag for me: https://leegold.com/posts/curiosity-is-the-job-security/ Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/curiosity-is-the-job-security/ Your knowledge worker job will likely evolve significantly in the next 5 years. You’re probably fine if you’re the curious type who constantly experiments with your workflow. If not, I reckon you’ll struggle. The most effective people I know are more productive now than ever, many leveraging LLMs. But their curious mindset would drive progress even if ChatGPT didn’t blast onto the scene in November 2022. This echoes a core tenet of the agile frameworks: Continuous Improvement. https://leegold.com/posts/from-why-are-we-doing-this-to-how-we-measure-success/ Tue, 25 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/from-why-are-we-doing-this-to-how-we-measure-success/ There’s a progression in a Software Engineer’s career, but the job title doesn’t really help us to understand the broader journey. Jnr/Mid SWE is about Applications and Infrastructure Snr/Staff SWE you add People and Delivery HoE/CTO you add Strategy, Culture and Risk There’s a through-line in all of these, that grows in intensity through the progression: As a Jnr/Mid, we learn to ask “Why are we doing this?”. You know, “Tell me about the problem we’re solving, or the benefit we’re hoping to get”. https://leegold.com/posts/the-20k-a-month-aws-bill-with-no-revenue/ Tue, 30 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/the-20k-a-month-aws-bill-with-no-revenue/ “I had $20k/month in AWS bills and no revenue” Do product engineering types have a responsibility to first time founders that goes beyond build and deploy, or is this a case of “It’s everyone’s right to set their own money on fire?” I’m reflecting on how this year I’ve now seen seven examples of how entities within the Australian tech industry have happily taken significant sums (think $250k) from founders to build lavish MVPs, without feeling beholden to take even basic steps to check if the founder is ready to be building an MVP, like have they: https://leegold.com/posts/before-you-start-your-mvp/ Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/before-you-start-your-mvp/ The Dream Link to heading You’ve worked in the field for 10 or 20 years, you’ve lived the problem first-hand, you’ve got this idea for a product. You know you won’t be a millionaire overnight, but your early revenues from the product will guide what features you build next. You just need to find “someone who knows tech”, and you’re ready to start building… …is a fantasy we tell ourselves as founders. https://leegold.com/posts/non-tech-leaders-champion-security/ Mon, 27 May 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/non-tech-leaders-champion-security/ Park your car in a bad suburb, leave your laptop on the passenger seat, leave your keys in the ignition. What happens next? The above is akin to what I often see in tech-enabled early-stage companies with respect to their security and privacy practices: Dangerous sh*t that’s going to result in loss and sadness if some changes to skills and awareness aren’t made. Here’s a real-world example of what I consider to be some of the best “everyday security culture” being put into practice by a non-tech leader at one of my clients: https://leegold.com/posts/aws-bill-like-servicing-car/ Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/aws-bill-like-servicing-car/ Shovel cash into the furnace that is AWS/Azure. It’s fine. For a while at least. Don’t do cost optimisation Link to heading I encourage early stage tech companies to not even think about their AWS/Azure bill until it reaches $10k/y. At that point, it wants a timeboxed 1 hour sanity check, with perhaps a few hours of tightening up unused services, then don’t look again until it reaches $20k. https://leegold.com/posts/real-full-stack-developer/ Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/real-full-stack-developer/ Have you ever met a REAL “full stack developer”? I have. Once. Just recently. During job interviews for a client, one walked in and (to my surprise), had no distinguishing visual features (no unicorn wings or horn, not even a faint glow). We explored the usual interview topics, but it only took one sentence for them to convince me they were the real deal. It was weird the preternatural calmness with which they shared how their current employer would sometimes ask them to head out to the warehouse and stack pallets when there were no others with a valid forklift license currently on shift.