--- title: The reality of being a CTO | daily.dev description: A sitting CTO at Nordhealth shares what the role actually entails day-to-day: being an executive first and technologist second, spending most time with... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The reality of being a CTO | daily.dev og:description: A sitting CTO at Nordhealth shares what the role actually entails day-to-day: being an executive first and technologist second, spending most time with... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/X1gVHDICR.png og:image:alt: The reality of being a CTO og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The reality of being a CTO **[LeadDev](https://daily.dev/sources/leaddev)** · 11 min read · 4 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary A sitting CTO at Nordhealth shares what the role actually entails day-to-day: being an executive first and technologist second, spending most time with non-engineering peers, and owning the link between technology and commercial outcomes. Key insights include the wide variation of the CTO role across company stages, the underrated importance of financial literacy for technical leaders, how AI has changed hiring philosophy (fixing headcount and measuring productivity gains before backfilling), and the isolation of being at the top of the engineering tree with no natural peer group. The author advocates staying technically close to the work while operating as a company executive, and emphasizes that business curiosity is as important as technical excellence for anyone aspiring to the role. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why would a company move its monitoring off hosted Grafana Cloud to self-hosted Grafana? Because the hosted pricing model stopped scaling as usage and data storage grew, making the ongoing cost unjustifiable against projected trajectory. Self-hosting was chosen because it gives full control over the cost curve, letting a team decide how much data sits in fast recent storage versus cheap long-term archive, at the expense of added engineering time to build and operate it. _Weighing hosted versus self-hosted monitoring costs is a decision daily.dev readers researching Grafana tradeoffs can track._ ### How is AI changing hiring decisions for engineering teams? Fixed AI adoption is prompting some engineering leaders to freeze headcount rather than hire by default, since a new engineer's real cost is several times their salary and productivity assumptions from AI-assisted coding are shifting fast. One example: a company fixed its number of engineering seats, waits roughly three months after someone leaves before considering a backfill, and only hires when the gap genuinely hurts, forcing scope cuts or smarter solutions instead of more headcount. _Engineering leaders rethinking headcount against AI coding gains can follow this debate on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@rzaasadov** · 0 upvotes > A great reminder that the best CTOs don't just build technology—they align it with business outcomes. Technical excellence gets you to the table, but business thinking is what makes you effective there. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why I code as a CTO](https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-code-as-a-cto-zsgdnxclg) · Hacker News · 42 upvotes · 5 comments - [Becoming a Business Leader, Not Just a Technical One](https://daily.dev/posts/becoming-a-business-leader-not-just-a-technical-one-qmwbei6gk) · Tech Lead Digest · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Technical Leadership for Business Impact: Focus on Customers](https://daily.dev/posts/technical-leadership-for-business-impact-focus-on-customers-bmvtfu6im) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The reality of being a CTO","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T07:37:28.681Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:14:34.501Z","description":"A sitting CTO at Nordhealth shares what the role actually entails day-to-day: being an executive first and technologist second, spending most time with...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5c270653ffc0431d72205c81270483d6?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5c270653ffc0431d72205c81270483d6?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"LeadDev","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"LeadDev","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--u_Q34nzh--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774514111/logos/leaddev?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/leaddev"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"career,leadership,ai-coding","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"LeadDev","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/leaddev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The reality of being a CTO"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-reality-of-being-a-cto-x1gvhdicr","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"A great reminder that the best CTOs don’t just build technology—they align it with business outcomes. 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