We polled the members of the Seattle CTO Club to see what they were most concerned about and came up with a list. Topping the list seems to be the question “Are we in a bubble?” and the corollary “Is this the year it is going to pop?”

• The economy, is this a bubble? Is it tech, oil, credit? How does that affect venture funding, private company valuation, hiring and retention?
• Employee hiring and retention: for multi-locations team, career paths
• Cyber-security: compromised systems, data leaks, exposure through partners, ransomware, designing for security
• Organizational “as a service” transition, modern organizational design given a baseline of CI/CD, microservices, and heavy automation
• Interaction between engineering and product
• Will Google make real inroads on AWS business in cloud computing? Is AWS the newest 800-lb gorilla?
• Business models around open source
• Most effective way to both operate and contribute to a large open source project
• Container specifications war: rkt vs docker; OCI
• Where & how to apply machine learning
• Physical space design and team productivity
• Enterprise software alternatives
• Working with legacy IT organizational structures: cloud versus managed services; outside consulting versus internal innovation
• Competing with Amazon on delivery
• Beacons, location awareness, hype
• Apple Pay, alternate payment systems, slow EMV adoption
• Building one’s stack and managing technical diversity; is it futile to try to keep the portfolio small?
• What are the most common reasons startups fail?
• Is the Agile fad over? If so, what’s next?