“I think one of the worst parts of being an engineering manager in the 2010s is ... when you joined the ranks to engineering management, one of the first lessons you'd get is like, hey, you need to never make a technical decision again.”
The Pragmatic Engineer · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · October 2026
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.
Transcript
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?
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