In this CTO Series episode, Daniel Harcek shares how leading engineering teams across radically different scales — from a 7-person fintech startup to a 2,000-person cybersecurity company — taught him that leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all. We explore how he builds AI-first organizations, drives agile transformations, and why he believes every person in a company should think like a tech person.
What Works at 10 People Breaks at 100
“Leadership is contextual, not absolute. What works with 10 people breaks at 50, at 100.”
Daniel’s career spans from building a 30-person team for a German startup out of Žilina, Slovakia, to leading 70 engineers at Avast’s mobile division within a 2,000-person organization, and now running a 7-person team at WageNow. Each scale demanded a fundamentally different approach. At smaller scales, you strip away operational overhead and push ownership directly to the people. At larger scales, you need guardrails, dedicated roles, and structured processes that the smaller team would find suffocating. The lesson: don’t carry your playbook from one context to another — rebuild it for the reality you’re in.
End-to-End Ownership Replaces Specialized Roles
“Each engineer owns quality for the task he delivers. And he owns the fact that it comes to production.” Continue reading BONUS: Leadership Is Contextual — How a CTO Adapts From 7-Person Startups to 2,000-Person Organizations
