Chief technology officers wear a lot of hats. As the head of a company's technology outfit, the CTO is involved in strategic decisions about which technologies to go with, methodologies to adopt and how to foster a culture that breeds innovation. At the same time, they also need to keep an eye out for emerging technologies and think about how today's decisions can impact the business in the long term.
To learn more about what Chicago's tech leaders are working on, we spoke with CTOs at four leading software companies. The interviews covered stacks, tech trends and company culture.
As CTO of a software consultancy with offices all over the world, Rebecca Parsons helps organizations like Amnesty International, the U.K. government, Target and Starwood enhance their digital strategies. According to Parsons, ThoughtWorks’ biggest asset is a bank of hard-earned lessons. With a Ph.D. in computer science from Rice University and years of industry and research experience, Parsons’ credentials are paralleled by few. But to her, curiosity is a far more important candidate trait than what’s on a resume.
What do you look for when hiring for engineers?
Aptitude, attitude and integrity have been the hallmark of our culture and selection process from the beginning. Our process aims to dig beyond the CV. We focus on finding people who are curious and intelligent more than asking: “What's on your resume?” While other organizations choose degrees and institutions as their selection point, we believe the guiding principles of attitude, aptitude and integrity allow us to bring together greater diversity of thought to solve the challenges our clients face. Talent does not necessarily have an Ivy League background or a 4.0 GPA.
Read the whole interview here...
As CTO of a fast-growing derivatives trading firm, Chris Smith knows a thing or two about performance optimization. Akuna Capital’s trading systems have to withstand unpredictable moments of volatility, during which data throughput can be 10 times higher than usual. At the same time, those systems need to be faster than those of Akuna’s competitors without becoming prohibitively expensive to run.
What are the most important tech developments you’re watching right now?
Akuna is passionate about staying ahead of the latest tech developments — specifically next-generation FPGA, GPU and SoC technologies and advancements in the networking space. We’re also constantly evaluating the latest compiler technologies as we strive to eke out every bit of performance in the low-latency areas of our strategy. The other side of the coin is receiving, storing, processing and evaluating huge amounts of data at scale from multiple sources — two very different problems with equally exciting technologies to explore.
Read the whole interview here...
Company culture is high on Joel Grossman’s priority list. As CTO of Leapfrog Online, he and his team’s core product is an e-commerce marketing platform that helps retailers sway consumers making high-consideration purchases — a herculean undertaking that requires close collaboration between engineers, product experts and end users. In Grossman’s view, looking exclusively for people who already have domain expertise can cause a company to miss out on great employees.
What sets your team apart?
Our core values — learning, transparency and inclusivity — create a solid cultural foundation and sense of community within our team.
Our talent identification and development process is also a differentiator. We prefer to find promising people in earlier stages of their career, or people from non-traditional backgrounds, and help them develop as technical leaders. Leapfrog offers formal apprenticeships for both engineering and product roles — a multi-disciplinary program that attracts new-to-technology talent ready to occupy junior roles. We especially focus on developing talent in underrepresented communities. A diverse work environment is better on both ethical and pragmatic grounds; diversity of background and thought process enables higher-performing teams.
Read the whole interview here...
Michael Tapson, CTO of closerlook, is keenly watching developments in machine learning and natural language processing. Like many players in marketing technology, his company is constantly looking for an edge in analytics, and the only way to maintain that edge is by automating as much of the process as possible.
What are the most important technological developments you’re watching?
For us, it’s definitely machine learning and natural language processing. If you’re looking to find meaning in data quickly and easily, machine learning is the only viable option out there right now. Combining that with NLP creates an opportunity to build solutions that are incredibly powerful and very simple to use.
What sets your team apart?
Flexibility. The team is able to fail quickly and change direction pretty seamlessly. They are working inside a marketing agency, not a pure software shop, and working in that environment can be challenging for a lot of developers. Our team handles it very well, and it has a great appreciation for the overall business strategies.
Read the whole interview here...
Images via participating companies and LinkedIn.
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