Director of Cloud at Namecheap | 🤓 Author of The Hybrid Hacker, a newsletter about Engineering Management, Leadership, Career Growth and Productivity

I've spent 25+ years diving deep into technology, building businesses, and leading high-performing teams of Engineers. I try to condense all this experience in my newsletter and share it with my 30,000+ subscribers.

My main goal is to help other Engineers and Leaders grow and avoid mistakes I made in my career, through sharing:

🔧 Practical advice on how to grow from Engineer to Engineering Manager or Leader
📚 Personal stories about how I grew from Individual Contributor to Director
🎨 Easily understandable articles enriched with visuals to simplify complex concepts

If all of this makes sense to you, join 20k+ subscribers at: https://hybridhacker.email

Nicola Ballotta

I can help you increase your team's productivity and develop your leadership skills using emotional intelligence and the best tools available for people management.

I don't believe in leadership training anymore. After over 10 years working as head of people strategy for many companies I saw no real results. Leaders would get motivated, but that feeling soon faded away among the everyday routine putting out fires and urgent clients demands.

Since I still believe in leadership as a key solution for productivity and client retention, I designed a whole new approach, totally problem-solution based.

I use my knowledge and experience as a Psychologist and Business Executive and the best coaching and mentoring tools to help my clients find the root of their problems and design a personalized solution.

It is not about having knowledge in leadership and emotional intelligence. It's about having a new perspective on yourself, your team and the results you want to achieve.

Get in touch so we can talk about the solutions for  groups, executives and teams.


Palombini Coaching

I’m excited to share a new chapter in my journey with CTO Craft.
My relationship with the community started in 2024, when Andy Skipper invited me to create and launch an online course, Emotional Intelligence for CTOs, on the Campus by CTO Craft.

Since then, I’ve been actively involved in the community on Slack, contributed to online events, and last year had the opportunity to speak and host a roundtable at the CTO Craft Berlin Conference.

Today, I’m proud to officially join CTO Craft as a Community Committee Member.

In this role, I’ll be supporting the community with events, content, themes, and direction — and contributing as a leader within the community through moderation, dialogue, and support.

CTO Craft is already one of the most valuable spaces I know for thoughtful, honest conversations about tech leadership, and I’m excited to help strengthen what’s already working so well.

If you’re a CTO or senior tech leader and you’re not yet part of the CTO Craft Slack community, it’s one of the most valuable spaces I know to exchange ideas, learn from peers, and explore what effective leadership really looks like in practice.

Comment below or message me if you’d like an introduction or want to learn more.

Carol Palombini

Coaching Tech Leaders on Executive Presence & Influence | Psychologist

Many CTOs reach a point where the question shifts from “What’s the next role?” to “What’s the right path for me?”

I’m grateful to CTO Craft for inviting me to be part of a panel exploring the CTO → Founder transition — alongside leaders who’ve actually made the leap: Hywel Carver and Naman Muley.

As an executive coach and psychologist, I’ll be bringing real client patterns, decision-making blind spots, and the emotional side of this choice that often goes unspoken.

If you’re a senior tech leader navigating this crossroads:
🔗 Event link: https://lnkd.in/ed-Bf5yd

✨ And you can subscribe here for more insights on executive presence, influence, and career decisions that truly fit you

Grateful to CTO Craft for the invitation to be part of CTO Craft Bytes: The CTO to Founder Path.

Many tech leaders I work with are quietly wrestling with a big question:
“Should I stay on the executive path, or is it time to build something of my own?”

As an executive coach and psychologist, my perspective on this decision comes directly from the patterns I see in real client conversations. 

Not the glamorous version of entrepreneurship — but the emotional, identity, and decision-making challenges beneath it.

In this panel, I’ll be bringing:
🔸 Real (anonymised) client examples
🔸 Common blind spots I see in CTOs considering the founder path
🔸 How gaps in emotional intelligence, self-awareness, or clarity around personal definitions of success can lead to costly decisions, in either direction

What I appreciate most about this conversation is the chance to pair that coaching lens with lived experience. 

I’m genuinely looking forward to hearing the stories and lessons from Hywel Carver and Naman Muley, who have made this transition themselves, and to the thoughtful moderation by Andy Skipper.

If you’re a CTO exploring what “success” really means for you, and what kind of leadership the next chapter demands. 

Subscribe below. I’d love to see you there!

Coming next week - have you considered building your own business? We'll be chatting with a panel of CTOs who have made the leap - join us to hear their experiences, the pitfalls and lessons they've learned and how they'd approach it having been in the trenches.

Michael Koltinov, RONY SHEIKH and 78 other attendees

View event: CTO Craft Bytes: The CTO to Founder Path

The question “Should I become a founder?” comes up more often than people admit — especially among senior tech leaders.

Last week, I had the pleasure of exploring this question on a CTO Craft Bytes panel, alongside Hywel Carver and Naman Muley, and expertly moderated by Andy Skipper. 

Thank you, Andy, for the invitation and for holding such a thoughtful, grounded space for this conversation.

What stayed with me most wasn’t a single answer — but a pattern.

💡 For many CTOs, the founder path isn’t blocked by lack of capability. It’s complicated by identity, expectations of success, and the reality that this is not just a role change, but often a life choice.

Hywel and Naman generously shared what this transition actually asked of them — the surprises, the trade-offs, and the moments where the story looked very different from the narrative we often see online.

I’ve just published the first issue of 2026 of Tech Mind Insights, where I reflect on this conversation through the lens of my work as an executive coach and psychologist — and on the decision-making blind spots I consistently see when Tech Minds consider entrepreneurship.

If this question is even quietly on your radar, you may find something useful in it.

What tech leaders often underestimate when they consider entrepreneurship At a recent CTO Craft Bytes panel on the CTO-to-Founder path, I had the plea

Open article: TMI #37 - From CTO to Founder by Carol Palombini • 5 min read

Bitsanis Konstantinos, Georgio Glushkov and 61 other attendees

View event: Executive Visibility & Influence Roundtable For Technology Leaders

Executive Visibility & Influence Roundtable For Technology Leaders

Two days before the panel, I want to share a pattern I see often when CTOs consider the founder path.
One of the most common decision-making mistakes is focusing only on skills.

The question becomes:
❌ “Am I capable of being a founder?”
❌ “Do I have the right skills?”

For tech leaders, this makes sense. Tech minds are analytical, careful, and trained to reduce risk. Skills feel measurable. Reassuring.
But skills can be developed.

The more important question comes before that — and it’s not why.
I prefer questions that start with “what for?”

Why often pulls you into a long list of frustrations with your current situation.
It keeps the focus on what’s broken, what you want to escape, what you’re tired of.

That’s where decisions get distorted — when they’re driven by what you want to fix, rather than what you want to build and preserve.

A better question is:
🔸 What do you want to become a founder for?
🔸 What do you want to create or experience that isn’t possible within a traditional executive path?

If questions like these are on your mind, I invite you to join CTO Craft Bytes: The CTO to Founder Path.

I’ll be sharing my perspective as an executive coach and psychologist, alongside Hywel Carver and Naman Muley, two founders who’ve made this transition and can speak from lived experience.

Subscribe to join the conversation — and feel free to send us your questions in advance.
Hope to see you there.

Open article: CTO Craft Bytes: The CTO to Founder Path | CTO Craft by ctocraft.com

CTO Craft Bytes: The CTO to Founder Path | CTO Craft

There’s a pattern I keep noticing among technology executives.
You deliver results. You’re trusted. You often carry the decisions no one else wants to make.

And yet, in strategic conversations, your influence doesn’t always match the level you operate at.
It’s not about skill or experience. At this level, progress comes from perspective, positioning, and the quality of the conversations you’re part of.

Next week, on January 29, I’ll be hosting an Tech Executive Growth Roundtable for tech leaders — a space for structured peer exchange, reflection, and practical perspective on real leadership and career challenges.

No performance. No posturing. Just an honest conversation with peers who understand the stakes.
If you’re curious or want to see whether this fits your context, details are here:

https://lnkd.in/eWuZdpzv

View company: Palombini Consulting & Coaching

Over the past months, I’ve had many conversations with technology executives who are delivering real results — yet feel their influence, visibility, or positioning hasn’t caught up with the level they operate at.

A common theme keeps coming up: knowing what to do isn’t the challenge anymore. 

What makes the difference at this level is having space to exchange real practice, gain an outside perspective, and refine how you are positioned in the room.

After the success of the roundtable in Berlin, I’ll be hosting the next Executive Growth Roundtable.

This is for tech executives who want to be seen as true business partners, communicate with greater impact at the executive level, and gain clarity on their next strategic move.

This won’t be a webinar or a training session.
 It’s a peer-level, structured conversation designed for reflection, sharp thinking, and honest exchange.

I’m signing off for a short break now and will share more details in the new year.

Until then, wishing you a restful end of the year — and space to think about how you want to show up next.

Dan Trout, Jocke Assarsson and 126 other attendees

taplio

The Battle

Nicola Ballotta

Palombini Coaching

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScorePalombini Coaching's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Nicola Ballotta

Palombini Coaching

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Palombini Coaching's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScorePalombini Coaching's LinkedIn Performance