Series: CTO Stereotypes - The Maximalist: Technology Clutter Core
Why settle for good enough when you can overbuild all the things?
Bigger, Better, Bolder
The Maximalist lives for the grand vision. Scalability? Cutting-edge tech? A shiny new tool for every problem? You are in the right place. They’re the CTO who walks into a room and says, “Let’s rebuild the entire platform on a cloud-native, AI-driven, blockchain-integrated stack.”
They don’t always grasp (or maybe don’t care about) the company’s financial model or how their tech decisions ripple through unit economics. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a quirk; it’s a blind spot that shines brightest when they transition from big-budget corporations to the leaner, scrappier world of small or midsize businesses.
Maximalists thrive on grand visions. They’re dreaming up systems that could handle ten times the current load, even if the company’s growth plan doesn’t call for it. They’ll push for the latest framework or a custom-built solution when an off-the-shelf tool would do. It’s not about arrogance. It’s about chasing the ultimate tech stack. Call it the "clutter core" of tech leadership: a chaotic, overstuffed aesthetic where every tool, feature, and microservice has a place, even if it’s just collecting dust. But the disconnect becomes painfully clear when the bill comes due or the ROI doesn’t materialize.
The Maximalist in the Wild
Maximalists often carry baggage from their past. Picture someone who cut their teeth at a tech giant, where budgets were loose (well, at least at one point when they were there), headcount was plentiful, and experimentation was the norm. They’re used to saying “yes” to every idea. Drop them into a midsize firm with tight margins or a startup scraping by on a runway. Suddenly, their instinct is to overbuild, and they get on a collision course with reality.
A few things a Maximalist might say:
“We want to build the absolute best.”
“Technology is our superpower!”
“We are building for the future.”
Some of these statements aren’t bad ideas in a vacuum. The problem? They rarely stop to ask: Does this align with our business goals? Can we afford it? That custom solution might cost six figures and six months, while the tool we already have could ship next week for free. Their maximalist mindset turns a lean operation into a tech hoarder’s paradise. It is impressive to look at, but a nightmare to maintain.
Conflict with a Maximalist
The Maximalist’s love for excess puts them at odds with anyone obsessed with efficiency (and effectiveness, for that matter): think a finance team, lean startup advocates, or even a pragmatic engineer.
The CFO wants to know why the cloud bill doubled. The product manager wonders why a simple feature took three sprints. The team grumbles as they’re pulled into yet another rewrite. Frustration festers when the Maximalist can’t justify their choices in terms of revenue, customer impact, or time-to-market. Unfortunately, they often see these metrics as “not their problem.”
A genuinely clueless maximalist might push a $500k overhaul on a company with $2M in annual revenue, not realizing that that kind of spending could tank the business. Their corporate-honed instincts don’t translate to environments where every dollar counts.
Hidden (and Not So Hidden) Costs
The Maximalist’s kryptonite is overinvestment. Projects balloon in scope and budget, timelines stretch, and the promised “future-proofing” rarely pays off in the near term. Opportunity costs pile up while competitors with more straightforward tech are eating their lunch.
Early in my career, I saw this firsthand on an overbuilt data warehouse project. We went all-in on the tech, every Microsoft SSXX service you can name. We were chasing best practices for modeling, efficiency, and scalability. The maximalist in me loved it! But the business? They just wanted a few small datasets, maybe a couple of months of data at a time. They didn’t care about the technical wizardry. In fact, they barely even used it. We built a skyscraper when a shed would’ve done, and the cost wasn’t just money. It was time and focus we couldn’t get back. Not only that, I learned a valuable lesson — ambition without alignment is expensive AND erodes trust.
Maximalists and Business Alignment
Maximalists often miss the forest for the trees. They’re so focused on tech perfection that they forget to ask, “How does this make us money?” or “What problem are we actually solving?” Clutter creeps in over time, too. I’ve seen it in teams with high turnover: each new leader brings their pet tools, layering them onto the old ones without fully cleaning house. You end up with a Frankenstein stack with half a dozen systems, none working at full capacity, all costing a fortune to run. In a big corporation, that mess might hide behind bureaucracy. In a smaller business, it’s not sustainable.
Business alignment isn’t sexy. Alignment is spreadsheets, customer feedback, and hard trade-offs. Maximalists recoil at constraints like “good enough” or “minimum viable product.” They’d rather embrace “innovation” than declutter their current approach.
But the guardrails of customer feedback and tradeoffs keep tech tethered to reality. Without them, you get a beautiful, overstuffed machine that no one needs.
Working Well Together
Advice for Maximalists:
Start with the end in mind. What’s the business goal? Build to that, not beyond it.
Plan to refactor as you go. Make sure you don’t let clutter pile up. Fewer systems that mostly work beat a sprawl of half-baked ones every time.
Tie every decision to a business outcome. Ask: “How does this improve revenue, retention, or efficiency?” If you can’t answer, rethink it.
Advice for Their Leaders:
Set firm budget and timeline guardrails. Maximalists need boundaries to tame their instincts.
Force the “why” conversation early. Make them pitch the business case, not just the tech case.
Pair them with a numbers-driven counterpart that will ground their vision in P&L reality.
Advice for Teammates:
Translate their grand ideas into bite-sized wins. Break the monolith project into deliverables.
Push back with data. “This costs X and only delivers Y..? What am I missing?”
Celebrate their creativity, but help them aim and focus it.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Maximalists bring bold ideas and fearless innovation. But disjointed from a real business context, they’re a liability. The trick is balance: harness that drive to build what matters, not just what impresses. Ditch the clutter core mindset for a leaner approach.
For Maximalists, the challenge is simple but brutal: learn the business, not just the tech. Study the financial model. Talk to customers. Obsess over unit economics as much as you do system architecture. One lesson I learned the hard way: You’ve got to be okay with non-ideal systems that still work. Fewer moving parts usually mean less spending and more focus. When architecture aligns with business results, you don’t just build something extraordinary; the entire business wins.
Start lean, scale smart, and let your business results define your legacy.