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Diary of a CTO
By Himanshu SaxenaTechnology
Diary of a CTO episodes
- Who Pays When an AI Agent Is Wrong Chen Salomon on AI GovernanceAn AI agent gives a customer a confident, false answer. Nobody on your team wrote it. The model did. Who is responsible?
Chen Salomon, VP Engineering at Sparta Commodities, explains how teams should govern AI agents—from permissions and evaluation to cost controls, human review, traceability, and accountability.38 min - What CEOs Actually Want From Their CTOs | Shailesh Hegde, CEO Hubilo | Diary of a CTO Ep 11Shailesh Hegde went from QA engineer to CEO of Hubilo. He knows both sides of the table. In this episode, he breaks down what CEOs expect from CTOs, how to report without losing trust, and where most engineering leaders get alignment wrong.
Topics: CEO-CTO alignment, CTO communication, engineering leadership, technical debt, startup scaling.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO53 min - Why Platform Engineering Is a Cost Strategy, Not Just an Ops Function | Alper | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 10Alper, Head of Platform Engineering at Choco, built his career from freelance game dev to leading infrastructure at a Berlin food-tech startup. In this episode, he breaks down cost capitalisation, what metrics actually matter in platform engineering, and how to improve developer experience without adding complexity.
Topics: platform engineering, cost capitalisation, developer experience, infrastructure scaling, engineering metrics.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO30 min - DORA Metrics Decoded: What Every Engineering Leader Gets Wrong | Nathen Harvey, Google Cloud | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 9Nathen Harvey leads the DORA research program at Google Cloud. In this episode, he cuts through the noise on engineering productivity, explains why rework rate and change failure rate matter more than velocity, and shares how AI is reshaping software delivery performance. Practical and research-backed.
Topics: DORA metrics, engineering productivity, DevOps, developer experience, software delivery performance.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO52 min - Engineering at Scale for Real-Money Gaming: Lessons From Daily Traffic Spikes | Pranabjyoti Bordoloi, Junglee Games | Diary of a CTO Ep 8Junglee Games handles traffic spikes every single day that most companies only see on Black Friday. Pranabjyoti Bordoloi, AVP of Engineering, breaks down how they build for speed, quality, and scale simultaneously, what real-money gaming demands from engineering leaders, and why business acumen is now non-negotiable for senior engineers.
Topics: gaming engineering, high-traffic systems, real-money gaming, engineering at scale, AI in gaming.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO47 min - From Shy Student to Engineering Leader: How to Build High-Performing Teams | Daniel Barrow, Valocity | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 7Daniel Barrow went from a quiet university student to leading multiple engineering teams across Australia and New Zealand at Valocity. In this episode, he shares how feedback shaped his leadership style, what it takes to manage managers, and how to keep remote teams engaged and high-performing.
Topics: engineering leadership, people-first leadership, remote team management, feedback culture, agile practices.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO1 hr 5 min - A Mining Engineer Who Became CTO? Varun Pandey on Scaling Teams 10x and Betting on AI Early | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 6Varun Pandey had no business becoming a CTO. He studied mining engineering. Then he built a citizen journalism platform, scaled FieldAssist's engineering team from a handful to 100+, and led a full microservices overhaul mid-pandemic. In this episode, he shares what actually works when scaling teams fast and why he's all-in on AI and open source.
Topics: CTO journey, engineering team scaling, microservices architecture, AI in SaaS, open source technology.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO58 min - Urgent vs Important: How the Best Engineering Leaders Decide What Gets Done First | Toshita Pandey | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 5Every engineering leader drowns in urgent work. Few protect what's actually important. Toshita Pandey, who has led teams across startups and MNCs, shares how she draws that line, keeps her team focused on high-impact work, and builds a culture that doesn't burn out under pressure.
Topics: engineering prioritisation, urgent vs important, engineering management, team culture, tech leadership.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO40 min - The Secret to Self-Organising Engineering Teams That Actually Deliver | Shalabh Aggarwal, CTO CredFlow | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 4Most engineering teams need constant direction. Shalabh Aggarwal, CTO of CredFlow, has figured out how to build teams that don't. In this episode, he shares how he went from hands-on engineer to CTO, what it actually takes to build autonomous high-performing teams, and how to tie engineering work directly to business outcomes.
Topics: self-organising teams, engineering leadership, CTO journey, team autonomy, engineering and business alignment.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO39 min - 20 Years of Engineering Leadership Distilled: Cost Capitalisation, Team Growth and Scaling Startups | Dhanush Hetti | Diary of a CTO S2 Ep 3Dhanush Hetti has spent over two decades leading engineering teams across the U.S. and Southeast Asia. In this episode, he breaks down cost capitalisation, why engineering flow metrics matter more than most leaders realise, and what it actually takes to scale startups without losing engineering fundamentals.
Topics: cost capitalisation, engineering flow metrics, startup scaling, engineering team growth, AI in engineering leadership.
Hosted by Himanshu Saxena | Diary of a CTO47 min
About Diary of a CTO
From the publisher's feed
Diary of a CTO, formerly known as The Engineering Success Podcast, is a show about the real stories behind technology leadership. Hosted by Himanshu Saxena, the podcast features candid conversations…
with CTOs, engineering leaders, founders, and technical operators on scaling teams, making hard technical decisions, adopting AI, improving developer productivity, and leading through uncertainty. It is less about polished success stories and more about what actually happens behind the scenes when technology leaders build, break, learn, and grow.