Ifor Evans is a Senior Technology Leader with extensive experience driving transformative growth within technology-based businesses. Notable for his roles at Gamesys, Bally’s Corporation, Alibaba, PropertyGuru, ThoughtWorks, Misys, and Dunnhumby to name a few, Ifor boasts an illustrious career spanning a variety of industries.
From building teams from scratch to overseeing large-scale operations with over 1200 members, Ifor provides invaluable insights into the nuances of tech leadership. Read below for Ifor’s reflections on transitioning from VPE to CTO, his motivations, and his perspectives on upcoming challenges in the technology sector.
What do you view as the biggest challenges going from being a VP Engineering to a Chief Technology Officer?
A CTO is different from a VP of Engineering in many ways. Whilst both will very often come from an engineering background, to be a CTO, you’ve got to be interested in so much more than just engineering. There’s data, AI, ML Infrastructure, Hosting, Security, DevOps, QA – you’ve then got to keep up with the latest frameworks, toolkits, technologies, ways of working – the ability to operate as a member of an Executive Leadership team, taking an interest in leadership, strategy, and commercials. How is the company doing? What do our numbers look like? Are we building the right things? A modern ELT wants a genuine partner, not someone isolated in a technical corner or box.
The second is delegation. All of a sudden you don’t get to cut code anymore; you’ve got to learn to work through people and to pick your leadership style, and the leadership style of driving people ahead of you with a big whip doesn’t really work. You’ve got to learn to inspire people and get them to follow you, learning to trust and to delegate. There’s then a need to be still able to keep tabs on all of that because you’re always going to be asked about all of this by the CEO.
The third, although this is likely learned as part of being a VPE, is the ability to build teams in diverse ways that are high-performing, motivated, happy, and productive. Years and years ago, an old mentor of mine said to me, “When you’re building teams, play chess, not checkers.” What he meant by that was, it’s fairly easy to build a team out of one type of person; it’s much harder to build a team of different shaped pieces. However, the end result is that chess is a much more interesting game than checkers – building diverse teams leads to much better results – but it’s harder to do.
What do you feel are the main tech challenges in your sector in the coming years?
I think some of the problems will remain the problems we’ve always had. Within technology, there are not enough good technologists, of any stripe. Recruiting and retaining skilled people is a constant struggle, especially in a field where demand outstrips supply. Building a strong work culture is key, as it’s not always just about paying the most money.
Unlike a lot of industries, technology moves really fast. Keeping up, without going so quickly that you make silly mistakes, is a real balancing act and hard to do because you can’t just adopt new technologies for the sake of it. It has to be for a reason and helps the company achieve its goals, or to solve a problem that makes life better in some way or another.
Cybersecurity threats are getting harder and harder to deal with. It’s an arms race between the good guys and the bad guys. That’s what wakes me up at 4 AM: hacks, breaches, losing sensitive info. It’s a constant challenge, especially for CTOs handling financial or regulated sectors. Regulators will often change rules quickly, leaving little time for adjustments.
Of course, no discussion about tech challenges would be complete without mentioning AI. First, adoption: how do we adopt it? What do we adopt? Autonomous coding? Debugging? Intrusion detection? Chatbots? You see the likes of Devin, the AI Coder, being built and released. But, I always say to people, don’t worry about AI taking your job, worry about somebody who’s better at using AI than you are taking your job.
The ethical use of AI is another problem – How do we manage that? Where is it ethical to have it? Where is it not? How do we know, and who decides, what is the right thing to do? For example, how can we be sure that an AI is GDPR compliant?
What keeps you motivated?
I love technology; it’s always been incredibly exciting for me, and it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. Technology’s breadth and depth mean you can work in any industry you want. Throughout my career, I’ve been in Gaming, E-Commerce, Logistics & Fulfillment, Banking & Fintech, Digital Media companies, and they’ve all been fantastic. I’ll never know everything, and there’s always something new to learn.
I’ve learned that solving big problems with technology requires scale, and that’s where building great teams comes in. In the past, I was that coder who thought only I could do things the right way. It was later in my career that I realised if I want to tackle bigger problems, I need to build teams that can work together effectively. Whether it’s in banking, gaming, or e-commerce, scaling and solving complex problems require productive teams. That’s what excites me – the challenge of solving interesting real-world problems with technology and people. It’s always forgotten that technology is built by people. And the better/happier/more productive your teams are, the better the result – whether it’s improving people’s lives with small improvements or significant changes, technology allows us to make a difference. That’s what motivates me every day.
