Just want to clarify, this is not my Substack, I’m just sharing this because I found it insightful.
The author describes himself as a “fractional CTO”(no clue what that means, don’t ask me) and advisor. His clients asked him how they could leverage AI. He decided to experience it for himself. From the author(emphasis mine):
I forced myself to use Claude Code exclusively to build a product. Three months. Not a single line of code written by me. I wanted to experience what my clients were considering—100% AI adoption. I needed to know firsthand why that 95% failure rate exists.
I got the product launched. It worked. I was proud of what I’d created. Then came the moment that validated every concern in that MIT study: I needed to make a small change and realized I wasn’t confident I could do it. My own product, built under my direction, and I’d lost confidence in my ability to modify it.
Now when clients ask me about AI adoption, I can tell them exactly what 100% looks like: it looks like failure. Not immediate failure—that’s the trap. Initial metrics look great. You ship faster. You feel productive. Then three months later, you realize nobody actually understands what you’ve built.
For those who were also interested to find out this means: Consultant and advisor in a part time role, paid to make decisions that would usually fall under the scope of a CTO, but for smaller companies who can’t afford a full-time experienced CTO
That sounds awful. You get someone who doesn’t really know the company or product, they take a bunch of decisions that fundamentally affect how you work, and then they’re gone.
… actually, that sounds exactly like any other company.
It’s smart. Not every company has a clueless rich guy to hand all the money to
Ive worked with a fractional CISO. He was scattered, but was insanly useful about setting roadmaps, writting procedure/docs, working audits and correcting us moving in bad cybersecurity directions.
Fractional is way better than none.
That’s more what a consultant is. A “Fractional C[insert function here]O is permanent or at least long-term. It just means the firm doesn’t have the resources and need for a full-time executive in that role. I’ve worked with fractional CTO, CIO, CFO, and CMO executives at different companies and they’ve all been required to have the company, industry, market, etc. knowledge that a non-fractional employee would. Honestly, this concept has been wonderful for small to midsize companies.