The CTO vs Status Quo series studies how CTOs challenge the current state of affairs at their company to push it toward a new height … or to save it from doom.

“When you step into a leadership role over people you know, you realize you’re now responsible for their salary discussions and approving their time off.”

You join a new company as a developer, meet your new friends, develop your technical expertise and… try to figure how to become its new Chief Technology Officer?

No, it doesn’t work like that. And it didn’t work like that for Gertjan, either. And yet, about 5 years after joining, he did become a CTO of CloudSuite. How did he do it?

Together with his mentor and CloudSuite’s co-founder Eric Klaasse, Gertjan walked us through his career from the start to the present day. Sit around to find out:

• why a product-oriented attitude and a desire to shape your environment are crucial,
• how to go beyond technical skills and show off leadership qualities early on and stay friends with both your peers and the superior,
• how to deal with the pressure of taking on more and more responsibilities for key areas of the company.

Meet Gertjan and Eric!

About Gertjan, Eric, and CloudSuite

CloudSuite’s vision

Arkadiusz Kowalski: Hello, Gertjan and Eric. Thanks for finding some time for us in such a busy part of the year. It seems that yours is filled not only with professional challenges. How did the trip to Antwerp go?

Gertjan: We do a lot of trips like this one for team building. Antwerp was fun, but not as fun as the one we had in Valencia.

Eric Klaasse: Now, Valencia was epic!

Your team seems to have a lot of fun but also a lot on its plate. Given how versatile the CloudSuite platform is, targeting both B2B and B2C audiences, I imagine that it’s also very diverse in terms of skills and attitudes.

Could you tell me more about your team and the challenges you’re facing today at CloudSuite?

Gertjan Oude Lohuis: The biggest challenge that we’re now facing is a shift towards a more product-oriented frontend development.

Frontend has always been our customization place where every customer and every theme could have its own outing on CloudSuite. It was where we did custom implementations. That grew a little out of control, with hard-to-maintain setups and configurations.

The shift away from a development playground to a more product-oriented approach went a little slow at first. Recently, the product team made a commitment to help the frontend team build and implement a frontend implementation library. There are a lot of technical challenges. It’s a big cross-functional collaboration.

Is this how you see it as a CPO, too, Eric?

Eric: Definitely,  this is one of our biggest challenges, but also not the only one.

Another challenge is that we support B2B channels and B2C channels at the same time, which is pretty difficult.

We excel at supporting business consumer channels, but our goal is to rank among the top players in this space. To achieve that, we must compete with specialized B2C eCommerce platforms.

Find out more about how the CloudSuite platform works (Dutch language, English subtitles available)

Joining as a software developer

It will be interesting to hear about all these challenges as experienced by Gertjan over his CloudSuite career.

Gertjan, you joined as a software engineer in 2017. Over time, you’ve risen through the ranks and eventually made it all the way to the CTO. Tell me about your first experience at CloudSuite.

Gertjan: Sure, but let’s start a bit earlier.

Before CloudSuite, I worked for a company in Amsterdam for 12 years. I had many responsibilities, including software development, DevOps and automation, and coaching junior developers. When I left, I took a few months off to decide what I wanted to do next.

CloudSuite was one of the places I had an interview at. Right from the start, I had a good feeling about Eric, Siebe, and Okko, the three board members at the time. However, I didn’t rush things. I took a few more months to orient myself and had more interviews. I kept CloudSuite on a leash, as we say in Dutch.

I kept coming back to CloudSuite because of all the positivity I saw there. I also felt their team had a lot of enthusiasm for the product. That eventually won me over, I accepted their offer, and I joined as a senior developer.

During my orientation period, I decided that I wanted to find out If I’m suitable for the role of a team lead. I mentioned that in one of my talks with Eric. He replied that they were indeed looking for someone who could provide day-to-day guidance to the team. He even hinted at a yet bigger role, but at that time I didn’t know what he had in mind.

About half a year in, I got the team lead position I wanted. It provided me with day-to-day management responsibilities but no HR-related work. I headed a team of about seven or eight developers.

I’m glad you mentioned product-oriented development. CTOs we talked to in the series said that they want their developers to be more than just coders. They should participate in DevOps, architectural, and product decisions. They should cooperate with other departments and be close with clients.

How close was your attitude in those early days to that product-oriented ideal?

Gertjan: Back when I first joined, cloud development was a lot more segregated. We had a backend team that focused on the backend only. The frontend team worked independently and there was not much cooperation. What’s more, developers weren’t really in contact with the client, with a notable exception of custom implementations.

Involving developers in figuring out what our customers actually want is something that we’ve discovered and strongly pushed for over the last years.

Today, it’s very important for all the teams to work together. That goes for both customer-specific implementations and product-specific feature development. The implementation team involves itself in conceptualization and talking with customers because they will be the ones to actually make the vision come true.

I strongly agree with the sentiment that a team lead or even each senior developer needs to have a broad perspective of their product. People do have their own specializations and skill sets they’re hired for, like frontend or database performance, but they need to know how they fit into the wider context of the product they work on.

Eric: A lot has changed indeed. Before Gertjan joined, we didn’t have any release cycles. Each team worked on the same code. Each had a particular version of the code implemented in their system, based on their needs.

Furthermore, the customers we integrated with gave us their data. We imported it by batch scripts. All of the new customer requirements were developed and implemented immediately. In a way, we followed the customer’s timeline and there was little communication between them and our team.

At some point, I believe it was after Gertjan came along, our processes matured. We introduced a monthly release. That way, every customer received an update at the same time – everyone was on the same page. It has changed our lives completely.

Eric, I asked about product-oriented development because I also came across the opinion that for a developer to have a shot at being a leader, they need to show a natural interest in the high-level aspects of building products. One of our guests called it “an urge to build.”

You’re not just a co-founder of CloudSuite. You’ve also managed developers across many different companies. What do you think about this concept?

Eric: It’s a very interesting concept. It’s part of a cultural fit, but there is more to it than that.

When someone applies for a job at our company, we place great value on a good cultural fit. Even if a candidate is an excellent developer or architect, it’s important that they feel comfortable with how we work. Without that alignment, collaboration can become challenging, which might impact the experience of the whole team.

Having said that, clashes aren’t always a sign of a bad cultural fit. Four or five years ago, we hired a new senior software developer. He was a good fit for us, a visionary. He and Gertjan both helped overhaul our development process.

Gertjan: I was the software development manager around that time.

We were looking to hire a senior developer. He referred to himself as a senior but only had about five years of professional experience, which made me a little suspicious.

But during the interview, he really won us over. He showed that he had his own vision and provided constructive ideas that were meant to build upon and improve what we do.

Once hired, he immediately didn’t shy away from criticizing the code and calling everyone out for it. We had a rough start. But we liked his ideas so much that we decided he should have more say in how things go. We made him a software architect and it turned out that it’s what he wanted from the start.

Soon, we both introduced microservice-based architectures and continuous deployment across the whole organization. He thought that iterative development and the ability to test frequently were essential. He started by taking one feature and rewrote it into the new architecture. It grew alongside the existing code base over the course of months.

Eventually, everyone bought his vision for software and product development, developers and management alike. We remain on that path today.

Becoming a leader

It seems that we are ready to talk more about that time when you actually got to lead teams at CloudSuite, Gertjan.

I’m interested in your perspective on managing stress. It’s probably easier to talk about high-level visions and be product-oriented when you only share a small portion of responsibility for the product. But when you become a leader, your decisions are scrutinized and you may even become a scapegoat when things go wrong. Did you struggle with that?

Gertjan: One of the great things about working at CloudSuite is that they always give time to warm up to any challenge. I took small steps and I adjusted to each new position gradually. Eric and the rest of the organization were very supportive of that.

I believe that a big part of CloudSuite’s company culture is that we never allow anyone to become a scapegoat. We take responsibility – we never play on the man, as we say in Dutch.

Does that mean that you never place blame on a single person?

Gertjan: Of course, someone always has to make a decision and take responsibility, but it doesn’t mean that your head will be on a stick if things don’t work out the way you wanted.

There’s something else that often goes hand in hand with placing blame – it’s micromanaging.

I had an interview with Hiber’s Bart Oor who told me that when he first became a manager, he really struggled with it. I know that this is a common issue for young leaders, but from what I heard, some have a hard time unlearning this habit. How was it in your case?

Gertjan: I mostly avoided micromanaging. I already knew the team and what it was capable of when I took up the leadership role. Delegating responsibilities and putting trust in people are fundamental when it comes to giving your teammates a sense of project ownership.

One thing I struggled with is keeping myself away from the keyboard. I still like programming, debugging, or automating. But I still need to let my teammates do that because they can only learn and improve by doing it. My responsibility as a leader lies elsewhere and I need to know when to let go.

Eric:  I’ve never observed any kind of micromanaging in the way Gertjan leads the team.

And this is really saying something because most leaders micromanage a lot. It’s difficult not to. If you are really experienced and good at something, you often tend to think that you can do everything better. But you need to learn to trust and delegate for the good of the company.

But what If you were to take up a leadership position for a whole new team. You don’t know the character and skills of its team members yet. How would you avoid micromanaging?

Gertjan: A situation where you join an existing team in a leadership role, be it as a CTO or something else, is definitely harder. You need to build up some credibility with the team and figure out the capabilities of each team member first.

My advice would be to work really closely with the team, but at the same time not try to take it over.

Do pair programming, walk through the architecture with them, sit down with everyone – not one on one, but as a whole team. Most importantly, set out goals and convey what problems you want them to solve, not how you want them to do that. Let your teammates make their own decisions and mistakes. Chances are that they will also surprise you with their prowess.

It seems that we’re covering more and more aspects of a tech leader’s communication skills.

Do you believe that some leaders are inherently better at communication than others? One CTO told me that you don’t have to be an extrovert to be able to speak up and resolve conflicts. You just need to listen to everyone, consider their opinions. What do you think about it?

Gertjan: Personally, I’m not an extrovert, but I also don’t think I’m a typical introvert.

I believe that you should excel in discussions with the merit of your arguments, not how loud or outspoken you are. That could easily create a toxic environment.

I’d rather work for a company where you can discuss your ideas in a safe space, both one on one and in a larger group.

I’m fostering a culture in which you can come up with an idea and present it to the team and be taken seriously, even if you are to be assigned to a different project the next day – that’s a healthy environment that every company should strive to create.

Facilitating discussions is an interesting aspect of communication. Eric, you’ve led successful projects other than CloudSuite, like Easy Order and Bridge/400. How important was tech leaders’ role as a facilitator of a productive conversation there?

Eric: In my former company, I was a tech leader, but I worked with developers who were more capable technically than I was. My role was specifically to make it easier for them to cooperate and to make them feel enthusiastic about what we built.

Of course, I knew pretty much everything there was to know about the product itself, but it was still a completely different experience from what we do today at CloudSuite. Technology has changed so much. Today, you’ve got a separate frontend, a DevOps organization and much more complexity.

Gertjan: But I think that Eric is still playing that role even today at CloudSuite. He still does a lot of programming, but he is also the go-to product guy that really knows why our customers want the things they want. He’s a bridge between the customer and development.

There seems to be a lot of overlap in your skills and experience. Am I right to assume that Eric had a big impact on your growth in the organization? How important was the help of other leaders at CloudSuite in your journey?

Gertjan: The confidence that Eric and Okko Huisman (CEO and co-founder of CloudSuite) gave me was most valuable.

When you step into a leadership role over people you know, you realize you’re now responsible for their salary discussions and approving their time off.

Eric and I had a lot of discussions at that time about the imposter syndrome – the idea that some people are afraid to be unmasked as incompetent, even when they absolutely do have all the credentials and experience to succeed.

I might have felt that way. I asked myself questions such as: “Why am I in this position?”, or “Why do I get all these chances while other people don’t?”. In moments like this, your shield of confidence is thin and things get to you easily.

In a more practical sense, one of the things that I’ve struggled with in this area is that I didn’t do enough 1on1s or even bilateral discussions with my team members. Eric pushed me to challenge myself to do them more and it boosted my confidence.

How did it look from your perspective, Eric?

Eric: A lot has happened during Gertjan’s journey to the role of CTO, but it has always felt natural to me. One of the best things we have done is taking so much time before we proceeded with Gertjan’s promotion.

Still, when we broke the news, we were a little afraid about the management team. It’s not an easy situation for them when one of them becomes a CTO and joins a board of directors. But ultimately, there were no major conflicts or problems here either. Nobody left the company because of Gertjan.

But if you don’t mind, Arkadiusz, I’d also like to ask Gertjan one question – did you find out If you can do it, if you really are cut out to be a CTO?

Gertjan: Yes, but like you said, it was something that came to me gradually. The feeling of being ready grew on me naturally during my years as a development manager.

And speaking more generally, was there ever a moment when you knew that the managerial path is for you, that there’s no going back to being a regular engineer?

Gertjan: In my previous company, I always said I never wanted to become a manager because I wouldn’t get a chance to do fun stuff anymore.

And I believe that I still had that mindset when I first joined CloudSuite. Even when I became a team lead, I thought that in this role I’d still be able to do a lot of programming or debugging with other people. I was a little afraid, but I didn’t think that I was abandoning my previous responsibilities.

Even when I moved from being a team lead to development manager, I still thought that I could always go back. I thought of myself as a developer-manager. 

But something changed when the environment began evolving rapidly. We got a separate DevOps team. We broke up one big team into two smaller ones. This also meant that the split between developers and managers became more pronounced. I realized that I couldn’t go back anymore. But I also didn’t want to anymore. I grew to enjoy this new path.

Becoming a CTO

Gertjan, this menagerial path may have been settled for you in 2023 when you became a co-CTO. How did your responsibilities change immediately prior to and after that promotion? Was it more of a test or another stop on the path to being a CTO?

Gertjan: It was definitely not a test. It was something that I talked about with Eric and other board members.

I became a co-CTO with Eric in January 2023. The year before, we discussed how we would divide our responsibilities. The biggest change for me was the fact that I was now included in board meetings. But I can’t say that it was a huge change. Eric had always been very open with me about everything concerning CloudSuite. 

Eric: To be honest, I think this change may have been even bigger for me. I can remember the day, 1st of January, I was thinking: “Shit, I’ve lost my job. What did I do?”

I was actually really curious about your division of responsibilities, Eric. It would also be great if you could offer a perspective on working alongside your former student, so to speak, as equals.

Eric: Like Gertjan said, there was definitely no big bang – the change took a year to implement. There was no one moment when our responsibilities split. It was a gradual and natural flow.

The biggest change was realizing that I’m not the only CTO now. In the first board meeting, I was as active as usual. I immediately came up with answers because I’m a bit more direct than Gertjan. And then Okko stopped me: “Eric, you’re not allowed to speak now. Wait for Gertjan to speak his mind”.

It took me a couple weeks or board meetings to get used to it . But I love my role at the moment because while I’m no longer part of the everyday decisions, I’m still the dominant advisor in the board of directors. As one of the founders of the company. I know that I can always speak my mind when necessary.

So you moved from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat? You still have something to say, but ultimately someone else is taking the wheel.

Eric: Well, I’m also a little bit navigating.

Gertjan: You could say that Eric is a passenger with the map on his knees.

So it’s almost like in a race car – there is a driver, and then there is also a pilot.

Gertjan, was everything really exactly like you expected? There must be a big difference between managing the entire department compared to leading a single team.

Gertjan: There’s one immediate difference. It occurred to me sometime last year. It’s the realization that you need to take the whole company into account in your decision-making. 

I know all the details and grievances of my team. But now I need to weigh them against business needs and the needs of other teams. I’m still learning to deal with it.

Before, as the manager of a dev team, I could allow myself to be more narrow-focused – as long as my team does fine, that means that the whole company is fine. Of course, this is not always the case. But even if it wasn’t fine, I always had Eric to rely on. Now, the responsibility is more on my shoulders. I still learn to handle that.

Wrapping up

Let’s close with a word of advice for developers and tech leaders who aspire to become a CTO someday.

First, Eric,  what would you advise to developers and tech leaders who want to establish a strong connection and mentorship that could help them hone their leadership skills and make a difference in their careers?

Eric: Don’t look for a mentor who wants to change you. Look for one that wants to help you, especially in understanding other people.

Understanding others is what I think is my forte and what should be the forte of each leader. If a team has a problem or there’s an issue to discuss, you should know how to address it. You should act as a mediator. Still, you should only guide people and events a little, without forcibly changing them.

Other than that, don’t make your decision too quickly – neither about who should be your mentor nor about the promotion itself. Progress naturally from managing positions, all the way to leadership positions, like Gertjan. Do it step by step. It must feel right to you, like you’re going in the right direction.

Gertjan – what made the biggest difference for you along the journey we’ve covered? What would you have done differently to get even better results?

Gertjan: Perhaps I would have started the journey earlier.

In my previous company, there were also a lot of opportunities. I didn’t reach out for them at that time. Looking back, maybe I should have been more proactive.

Then again, I’m in a great place now so perhaps things turned out the way they should have.

There’s some mental work that you need to do to ease yourself into a new role with more responsibilities. When you actually land that position you wanted, try to say it out loud: “I am a developer manager”, or: “I am a CTO”.

It doesn’t feel like much, but saying these simple facts like this really helped me internalize this new role, made me realize that this is a path I’m taking. It’s also a different way of saying: “Go for it.”

Resources

Can you also recommend some learning resources that expand on many of those issues we talked about today?

Gertjan: There’s one book I’d really like to recommend – Accelerate.

It’s one of the readings that sparked our interest in and journey toward microservices and continuous integration four years ago. It’s a must read for CTOs, management, architects, and developers – to the point that we give a copy of it to all of our new arrivals.

What’s next? 3 lessons for CTOs to apply

So, what do you think? Do you still believe you’ve got what it takes to become a CTO? Are you ready to climb to the top? No need to rush things. If you take Gertjan’s advice, chances are that things will simply fall into place by themselves. Just remember:

• Don’t just take orders, try your best to influence and change the environment around you. Be in close contact with other departments and customers and gain a high-level understanding of the product and company.
• Let your team shine – when you gain a little power, don’t let it go to your head and don’t micromanage. You may have to code less and trust the capabilities of your teammates. Like Eric says, you need to understand them, too.
• Be aware that it takes time for all this to feel right – every time you get another promotion, you’ve got more and more on your shoulders. You are now responsible for the whole company. It’s stressful and it gets better with time.

Good luck!