You have likely seen the LinkedIn posts and tech finance blogs spouting about how Uber and AirBnB were born out of the ashes of the 2008 credit crunch that put millions of people out of a job and led to a decade of slow recovery. “One can only imagine,” the posts are saying, “what new companies will come out of this COVID-19 pandemic.”

As distasteful as it may feel to discuss the future of unborn businesses while a virus is impacting and ending so many lives, history proves that the Facebook posts about shiny, new companies starting up and finding immense success during and after turmoil are true. A good crisis should never go to waste, some say.

But these seemingly pithy and overly simplistic posts are missing the point. A big, glimmering, successful business is not the point at all.

The point is catastrophe isn’t just a catalyst for starting a new business, but a chance for systemic change in business. And I believe that we are seeing the earliest stages of a worldwide movement — a movement of people from an unexpected place.

I am talking about the musicians, artists, filmmakers, and content creators of this world who use their creativity to progress society’s voice. And this modern culture class is completely fed up with three-piece-suit business models and royalty-stealing contracts that have blunted their message for years.

I am talking about the group of visionaries who have been cheated by the 1950’s-style business models of today, and are sounding a full-throated, William Wallace rallying cry for creative founders to succeed in business ventures on their own, above and beyond the Ubers and AirBnBs of this world.

This trend may not be obvious to everyone, so allow me to connect a few dots by going back to the Great Recession of the late 2000’s and looking at not just a big, successful business that was born out of it — but the people who brought it into this world.

Say hello to disruption

In post-bubble-burst 2009, unemployed white-collar workers flocked to places like MIT and Silicon Valley to funnel their rage at being screwed over by big business into tech startups with dreams of change and the new buzz word — “disruption.”

Not every group of disgruntled former finance pros found success, but the atmosphere was ripe with risk and fueled by an overall feeling of, “Let’s burn it all down and start over.”

One of the most successful of these recession creations was the OG of startup accelerators — Y Combinator.

Their premise was simple: they would scour the globe for the most disruptive ideas (note — not companies) created by visionary inventors for the benefit of societal progress and cocoon them inside Y Combinator’s safe-harbor, offering each inventor, corporate-axe-murdering rebel, and hacker a chance to perfect their craft and plan their revenge on the system that put them there.

Y Combinator was so successful at mobilizing this group that over the last 10 years, nearly every single “we’ll make your startup successful” incubator or accelerator program in the U.S. today is a watered-down, sugar-glazed, vacuous version of Y Combinator.

But what people forget is that Y Combinator’s first goal wasn’t to be a business. It was to be a movement . The founders of Y Combinator did not come together to build a copy of a copy of a slightly different business that already existed — they wanted to pour jet fuel on the system and then light the match.

And they ended up changing behavior for startup founders everywhere.

Where are we now?

It’s debatable whether today’s Y Combinator and their more recent offspring are still true to their original visions — but the point is that historically speaking, large-scale crises aren’t just a catalyst for generating new businesses, but more precisely for generating long-term changes in how businesses behave.

Worldwide catastrophe tends to shake people from their stultifying march down the path of “how granddaddy did it” tradition, take a hard look at the inner workings of the system they are stuck in, and redress the imbalances often caused by greed and old-school thinking.

So, to the punchline: the area of human experience that remains shockingly under-discussed in the world of startups, innovation, and disruption is the arts and humanities.

The commercial systems and business models that exist for today’s musicians, inventors, filmmakers, artists, and culture creators are stunningly outdated and stupefyingly industrial.

Or, in 2020 terms: we got cool, diverse people making badass music, movies, videos, art — so why TF are we still letting a bunch of rich, old white dudes take all their money and stifle their abilities to say what needs to be heard? These pioneers of thought and creativity underpin the very happiness of our day-to-day lives. They are the coders of society; the architects of our world’s moral piping.

The creativity movement

For those who are paying attention to them — i not the old white dudes — there are signs the founder-like disruption has already begun. The same rage that flowed through the veins of early Y Combinator founders in 2009 is pulsing within the singers and songwriters who were left out of Spotify and record label negotiations in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

It’s in the hearts of independent filmmakers and Etsy shop owners who watch industrialized corporate structures take a fat cut off the top of their hard work. The hardship these culture shapers are being forced to suffer as they are thrown out of their unstable jobs and into unemployment has only increased their eff-the-system desires.

The rage is there, the independence has been thrust upon them, and the timing for systemic change is now.

No one is saying this — but the next big innovative disruption is coming from the group of forward thinkers who are capable of taking the startup lessons of Dropbox and Stripe and the frustrations of pioneering explorers and make a beautiful, innovative, corporate-defying, #BlackLivesMatter-championing, #Equality-bringing, #SaveThePlanet-screaming baby.

Simply put, when this worldwide tragedy is finally behind us, we will look back and find that the great business disruption of our time won’t be the Netflix of marketing or the Uber of supply chain management.

The movement that finds a completely new way to empower the culture class of creators, inventors, and founders with a business-building framework that fits the morals of the artist rather than the other way around will be hailed as the great innovator of our time.

CTOs share how to move from a dev role to the C-suite

This article was originally published on ult by Mikaella C . ult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world.

Have you ever wanted more control over the direction of your company? When is it time to rethink your role?

One study from Honeypot found that many developers become less satisfied with their working environment and company culture as they age, describing an increased risk of ageism from 29 onwards. As we grow more accustomed to working life and professional responsibilities, it’s common to become frustrated with elements that might feel outside your control as a single developer.

Some issues might be set by management or a C-level team, which you have little say in. And while there are all kinds of ways to negotiate for and manage a better working life, some developers choose to change up their own role dramatically — perhaps even by building their own company.

The path from developer to CTO isn’t straightforward, but it is well-paved. And there are all kinds of reasons to pursue it, and different ways to get into the role. Maybe you were the first developer on the ground at a company; maybe a friend approached you with a big deal. Or you might be actively searching for that big C-level role.

Whether you’re dreaming about the future or ready to start pursuing that role right now, there are strategies you can use to build yourself into the best (and most hirable!) CTO you can be. Take a page from other developers who have done the same thing.

1. Move beyond your standard toolkit

The best developer in the world isn’t going to make a good CTO if that’s all she can do. As Reiner Kraft, CTO of Yunar explains, there are three main fields when it comes to a CTO’s responsibilities:

These three fields cross over so many different spheres of work and responsibilities that, to a certain extent, the exact nature of a CTO’s role is decided by the CTO (and the company they work for) themselves. Greg Brockman, former CTO of Stripe and now the co-founder and CTO at OpenAI, writes that while every CTO he spoke to, “viewed themselves as the facilitators of the technology organization,” the way this actually functioned differed:

This flexibility and breadth of responsibility means that you need to broaden your toolkit to look beyond software and programming. As a CTO, you’ll be responsible for huge swathes of a company’s work, from culture to recruitment to business and more. You’ll want to get involved in some of these areas as soon as you can. There’s lots of small but valuable ways to take on more responsibility at your current company:

Help plan a company party

Sit on the hiring committee for the next engineer to join your team

Help out a designer ordering new team t-shirts

Don’t be afraid to ask if you can shadow someone in a role or team that might not have a lot to do with your day-to-day workload. Put your hand up to work on projects closely linked to business development and administration, where you can learn by osmosis as you go.

Most companies are excited to see an employee interested in their own professional development and this extra activity might even come in handy around promotion time, but it’s also part of the territory of being a CTO, so it’s important to see everything as a long-term effort. Assess your own capacity, find your areas of deficiency and make slow and steady efforts to build out your skillset.

You might also decide to pursue a Master’s degree at some point, which will give you a thorough and verifiable claim to expertise. One of our surveys found that over two-thirds of Berlin’s CTOs have a Master’s in a variety of fields including Computer Science, Business Admin, Physics, and even Art! But the most common Master’s was in IT which includes IT Management, Business Information Systems, Business IT and, in Germany, Wirtschaftsinformatik ​(Business Informatics), all of which offer a useful link between technical and business knowledge.

But that still leaves a third of CTOs who don’t have a Master’s degree, meaning that if you build your skillset through practical and professional experience, you may not need further education to reach that role.

2. Find a community

‘Try to network’ can be vague and intimidating advice. It might conjure memories of awkward conversations or forced friendliness. At the same time, it’s important as a wannabe CTO to keep an eye out for opportunities, like-minded people and exciting ideas, because as a CTO or co-founder you’ll want to get in on the ground floor.

Rather than thinking of it as networking, try to expand your opportunities to encounter any of the above in situations that you find genuinely interesting and are comfortable with. In most major cities there are plenty of meet-ups and tech conferences where you might be able to socialize with other people interested in the same industries and companies you are. Or try going to a hackathon, where a fun project for a day might just turn into a company.

If you’re not much for events, extend your energy online. LinkedIn is an obvious avenue for professional engagement. Make your page an active one that people will recognize. Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

Write short blogs (Is there a fun problem at work you solved? Did you just go through a hiring process and have thoughts on how it could be improved? Have you got a new favorite hack you want to share with others?).

Share articles you found interesting.

Make memes related to your field (remember to keep it professional!).

Liking and commenting on other people’s posts can also go a long way towards improving your presence on LinkedIn, making you a digital face that others might remember.

It’s also okay if LinkedIn isn’t the place for you: there are still other options. Investigate Reddit, Twitter and even Discord, where there are also fun and engaging communities. The important thing is to put yourself out there, engage with the world and make it easy for anyone who has that burgeoning idea for an amazing company to find you, their next CTO.

3. Get ready to lead

In the end, any great C-Level position is about one thing above all else: people. Greg Brockman, co-founder and CTO at OpenAI shared:

Brockman’s responsibility to support his employees came from the position of CTO at Stripe, but you don’t have to wait until you’re a CTO to start working to improve and understand the lives of your colleagues. You could start simply by talking to your colleagues and asking if they need help. By engaging with work beyond your own, not only will you become a friend to your colleagues, you’ll get a clearer picture of the problems your company is addressing.

You could also start thinking and reading like a C-level professional well before you reach that stage, giving yourself a leg-up amongst the competition as well as a taste of what’s to come in the real life of a CTO. Books can also impart useful leadership strategies and communicative techniques which will make you a better CTO when the time comes.

Joel Beasley, who began writing code at the age of 13 and sold his first tech at 18, became a CTO who works with startups and billion dollar enterprises alike. He highlights the importance of communication:

Along with Beasley’s book, you could try leading tech and entrepreneurial authors including Ben Horowitz, Rorie Devine, Mark McCormack, and more. And if you struggle finding the time to read, consider an app like Blinkist, which digests non-fiction into easily accessible bite-sized ideas.

If it feels like this work is leading you away from your first love — coding — that’s something to keep an eye on. But Reiner Kraft warns that this might be part of the job:

4. Learn to let go

A lot of CTOs say that, for better or worse, their role involves stepping back from their first love — developing.

Sometimes becoming CTO might mean that, from day one, you’re no longer coding . Other times it happens slowly, over time. When describing his own journey, Airbnb’s co-founder and former CTO Nathan Blecharczyk said:

Many CTOs make an effort to keep coding as part of their life. “I still code and program daily because it is important to make sure these skills are relevant and up to date in order to work with my team of developers and lead them appropriately,” Chalmers Brown, CTO of Due, says. “Plus, I enjoy doing this aspect of work.”

Others find new ways to stay close to code; when Arash Ferdowsi was still CTO at Dropbox, he was famous as a “chief debugger”, where Forbes reported on , “his propensity to file bug reports at all hours —3 a missives [were] not uncommon. While he no longer codes, he [was] still the one making sure the company’s growing family of products remains unified and retains a simplicity of design and ease of use.”

And even when you’re still working close to code, you might have to move away from the kind of complicated, rewarding work that makes up part of a developer’s day-to-day life. An important part of being a CTO, says HeidiPay CTO Alistair Stead, is being:

Whether you work to keep coding part of your working life or not, it’s certainly true that CTOs have such a wide scope of responsibilities that you’ll be doing a lot less coding than a developer would. As a developer seeking to move into a C-level position, this is worth reflecting on. Would you be truly happy taking on a role that is more about leadership, business strategy and company culture than coding? Would you be ready to spend more time in meetings than at your computer? More time imagining than building? It’s fine if the answer is “yes, definitely!”; it’s also okay to say “yikes, no thanks!”

Higher doesn’t always have to mean better. But if you do decide the CTO path is the one for you, it’s a fascinating and exhilarating experience with a lot to learn along the way. Try to enjoy the journey as much as you do the outcome.

Speak less, communicate better

Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter!

When we think about communicating more, most of us imagine it’s about talking more. But communication is really about exchanging information — that includes receiving it. You can’t listen when you’re talking, or as Larry King once put it: “I never learned anything while I was talking.”

Despite this, most conversations are composed of two people just waiting for their own turn to speak. Now before you start thinking I’m putting myself on a high horse… I’m definitely guilty of talking too much. Sometimes I come home from an amazing meeting, only to realize I was way too excited and eager to tell my stories that I didn’t let the other person speak

But this isn’t inherently a bad thing, it’s just that the real master of that meeting wasn’t me — it was the other person.

If you want to please someone, all you have to do is encourage them to tell their stories. If you walk out of a meeting having said nothing, and the other person did ALL the talking, they will feel great about meeting you and remember it as an amazing conversation.

The best part though is that YOU will actually have had an interesting conversation. Not speaking will force you to listen, and when you listen, you will learn.

But how do you strike up a meaningful conversation with someone you might not know that well? A father of a friend of mine used to be an airline CEO. Whenever he traveled, he’d always chat up the people he sat next to. He had this great line that’s been a favorite of mine ever since I heard it: “I already know all my own stories, so let’s talk about you.”

It’s a rare thing to meet people who are genuinely interested in you and are willing to really listen to what you have to say. Honestly, you might as well wish for a unicorn.

So for your next conversation, I challenge you to conduct a little experiment: be that magical creature. Find an excuse to not talk. Any at all!

Say you are tired of your own stories and want to hear theirs, or tell them your throat is sore from an intense evening of living room karaoke. Do everything in your power to encourage them to speak more, give their stories space, revel in what excites them, sit back and see what happens.

My bet is that you’ll learn something, and you’ll delight someone.

Can’t get enough of Boris? Check out his older stories here , and sign up for his newsletter here .