Gergely Orosz asked the three-time CTO what a CTO actually does, and how AI has changed the role. Larson said that ethos is gone. He described managers being pushed away from technical work as a root of the bloated, headcount-driven organizations of the last decade.
So I was at Calm for, I think, three and a half years. Then I was at Carda for two years. And then I joined Imprint a year, year and a half ago, something like that, which is where I am today.
…see are technical and close to the thing. How do you find the CTO? I know you have a book on this as well, on engineering executive careers, and there's a lot of answers, but what is your mental model? How was it? And how is it now, especially? Because now with AI, I think your role has changed.
I think one of the worst parts of being an engineering manager in the 2010s is I think like when you joined the ranks to engineering management. Like one of the first lessons you'd get is like, hey, you need to never make a technical decision again.
That's what it used to be, right? I remember.
That is, that's like literally, you know, what I was told. And I think you'd see people like the most important thing is to let go about technology decisions. And this was the ethos then. And that's definitely not the ethos today. But I think the thing that I kind of aspirationally really loved is…
at CTO, or are you more than CTO at imprint?