Refactor: The CTO's Guide to Reclaim Your Time and Multiply Your Output (Press Any Key to Continue: A Series for Rediscovering Your Purpose and Passion in Tech)

You didn't become a CTO to spend your days stuck in meetings, buried in Slack, or playing referee between product and engineering.

But somewhere between the morning syncs and the late-night production fixes, your role stopped feeling strategic and started feeling like survival.

Refactor offers a fresh approach to leadership in fast-paced tech environments, helping you reclaim your time and multiply your output. It's about returning to what drew you into technology in the first place: the joy of building, solving, and creating. You'll learn how to recenter your role around your highest value- delegating without disappearing, scaling without burning out, and leading without being constantly on call.

This book isn't about hacks. It's about building leverage:

• Design systems that run without you.
• Build teams that make decisions without constant oversight.
• Reclaim time for strategy, architecture, and the work that actually lights you up.

If you're a technology leader feeling the weight of growth, increasing complexity, or just sheer exhaustion, Refactor is your guide back to efficiency, energy, and the deep satisfaction that comes from working in your zone of genius.

It's time to stop surviving your role and start shaping it.

Etienne de Bruin is a bestselling author, speaker, and founder of 7CTOs, a global peer network for technology leaders. A CTO with over two decades of experience, including co-founding and successfully exiting a SaaS company, he now helps high-performing CTOs and C-suite leaders apply systems thinking, build healthy teams, and scale with clarity. His mission is to help them lead with intention and love their life while thriving in their role.