The CTO Podcast · Insights & Strategies for Chief Technology Officers Navigating the C-Suite while Balancing Technical Strategy, Team Management, & Innovation

Leadership, Technology, and the “It Depends” Philosophy: Insights from Kevin Goldsmith

·56 min·3 clips

Kevin Goldsmith says ChatGPT has become part of the tool set at DistroKid.

Etienne de Bruin opens with Kevin Goldsmith and starts with a small, human detail about a new monitor arm and the odd pleasure of standing instead of sitting. That sets the tone for a conversation that treats CTO life as practical, messy, and never fully settled. Kevin is introduced as a seven CTOs member and mentor with experience as CTO and VPE in the US, Sweden, and the UK. He is currently CTO at DistroKid and a principal at Nimble Autonomy. The new book comes up early. Its title, "It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It's a CTO. It depends. Writing on technology leadership 2012 to 2022," matches the conversation's plainspoken view that judgment matters more than slogans. Etienne and Kevin talk about how company stage changes the job, and how much easier it is for younger people now to find a route into leadership. Kevin notes that many people move into managing small teams because they care about building things, not because they have already absorbed every lesson about complexity or computer science. He contrasts that with the 1990s and early 2000s, when there was far less support and fewer resources. The conversation keeps coming back to the same blunt idea: nobody really trains you into being a good CTO once you are in the chair. Either you can do the job or you cannot. That is not framed as cynicism. It is presented as the level of the role. The conversation also leaves room for the fact that there are now more books, more conferences, and more podcasts about technology leadership than there used to be. Kevin points out that there are better management books now, plus books focused specifically on technology management that were rare before. The show becomes part of that larger pool of learning. The discussion is comfortable with detours, but it keeps returning to one question: how does someone learn to lead technology well when every situation wants something different? That is where the title's "it depends" logic really lands. The close stays warm and community-minded, with reminders to stay connected through ctopod.com and 7ctos.com. The whole exchange sounds like two working technologists trying to make sense of a role that keeps changing.

As heard by us

A loose, useful talk about how CTO judgment gets learned over time.

Kevin Goldsmith's conversation with Etienne de Bruin keeps its attention on CTO judgment, context, and the fact that leadership is usually messier than any tidy playbook.

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Why you'd press play

You want a CTO conversation that respects ambiguity.

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