Trust by Default, Open-source, AI Pragmatism | Antoine Jacoutot, Chief Technology Officer at Believe
Antoine Jacoutot is the CTO at Believe, where he leads a 200+ person engineering org to help artists around the world share their music on digital platforms.
His "trust by default" approach creates what he calls a "right to fail" culture, where teams can make calculated risks without waiting for consensus.
Antoine Jacoutot also built and led high-performing teams at ManoMano and Sunday, all while maintaining his role as a core OpenBSD developer for the past two decades.
Takeaways
Being a self-taught, jack-of-all-trades across different tech roles helped Antoine gain a more holistic view that shapes how he drives execution, avoiding common biases that result from more linear paths.
Contributing to open source projects helps Antoine stay grounded in practical coding work and provides a way to challenge mainstream thinking by focusing on stable technology over flashy trends, which CTOs often fall into.
Antoine's "trust by default" approach requires creating a "right to fail" culture where teams can make calculated risks and small bets without waiting for consensus, because if every decision has to be perfect, people stop making decisions altogether.
Like DevOps and automation that evolved infrastructure work instead of eliminating it, AI fears are overblown. The engineering job is constantly evolving (not replaced) with new tools, and AI is one of them.
Yassine: As a CTO building products for music artists, and an artist yourself, how does your creative background shape the way you lead engineers to serve that community?
Antoine: Thank you for this, but I would not call myself an artist. I’ve always tweaked and hacked on computers for as long as I can remember. I did spend a few years working as an actor about 30 years back, but that was a long, long time ago 😅
I don’t think my early experience in theater had such a strong impact on the way I envision building and organizing Tech on a daily basis. I think it has more to do with the fact that I was self-taught, so if there’s something shaping the way I lead engineers today, it’s that.
Even though I come from a system-and-network-engineer background, I occupied lots of different roles within Tech. I’m not an expert, more of a jack-of-all-trades, and I think changing scopes helped me gain a more holistic view of the way I drive execution.
Not going to engineering school did have an impact as well, because I used to lack some of the “obvious” skills you learn at school. But it’s also a benefit, because it removes some of the biases that a more academic education can bring.
Like in acting, I strongly believe in the collective and the huge value of cross-functional expertise when tackling complex problems. You cannot make the show by yourself, and empathy is key.
You could also argue that implementing “Chaos Engineering” could be seen as a rehearsal for a play. At Believe, one of our values in Tech is that we are “one crew,” which could match the dynamics of a theater company. Software craftsmanship could be seen as an art form.
Anyway, yesterday the stage was my world, today the stack is my world.
Y: You’ve maintained over 300 OpenBSD packages and continue contributing while serving as CTO. Do you see your active open-source work as a way to help you identify and attract like-minded engineering talent?
Antoine: I do it because I’m passionate about it. It’s a community I’ve been part of for over two decades. It’s about the craft, the rigor, and the relentless pursuit of building clean, secure, and correct software that lasts.
OpenBSD has been sort of a lifeline throughout my career. I’ve contributed to several areas, but nowadays I can only find the time to focus on porting and maintaining applications from the open-source ecosystem. But it still keeps me in the dirt (i.e., in the code).
My involvement in OpenBSD plays a critical role in legitimizing myself against… myself. It is the perfect example of boring technology, far from the fashion tech I am surrounded by. It helps me challenge mainstream thinking, be more pragmatic, and get away from nonsense. It’s about valuing simplicity and long-term stability over flashy, short-term gains. It’s about owning your work, taking pride in its quality, and having your code scrutinized by some of the sharpest minds out there.
That said, I do look at open-source involvement when I look at résumés. It’s not a golden ticket, but it’s a nice cherry on the cake and usually makes me want to know more about the applicant.
Y: You’ve mentioned “Trust by Default” as a core management principle at Believe. How do you balance giving teams autonomy with ensuring alignment?
Antoine: “Trust by Default” isn’t about letting a thousand flowers bloom in a thousand different directions. It’s about creating a culture where smart people can move fast and break things, without breaking the business.
But you can't have autonomy without accountability. And you can't have either if you are not surrounded by people you can genuinely trust. We look for builders, people who are passionate, who have a point of view, and who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.
This is a practical approach. I trust you to be the expert in your domain. I trust you to make the right calls. And I trust you to tell me when I'm wrong. In return, you get the freedom to execute without someone breathing down your neck. It’s a two-way street with a continuous feedback loop. But don't break the trust!
This feeds into another one of my favorite principles: “Fire and Forget.”
When I delegate something, I do my best to truly let it go. I don't need to be in every meeting or CC'd on every email. Micromanagement is the enemy of speed and the quickest way to kill trust.
To keep heading in the same general direction while ensuring autonomy, we need a clear “why” and a frame. Our mission at Believe is to serve artists and labels at each stage of their development in the digital ecosystem, with fairness, expertise, respect, and transparency. Every team, every feature, every line of code should ladder up to that.
Boundaries are defined by our “Tech Manifesto and North Stars,” a document where we outline our core tenets, values, cultural aspirations, and main goals.
We are building a road of tools and practices that make it easy for teams to do the right thing. You can go off-road, but you need a damn good reason and you need to own the consequences. This creates a strong sense of ownership. We are pushing the “You build it, you own it, you bury it” paradigm to create end-to-end responsibility for the entire lifecycle of the software, including managing technical debt and garbage collection.
Finally, you can't have trust and autonomy without the right to fail. If every decision has to be the “right” one, people will stop making them. They’ll wait for consensus or permission. We encourage experimentation and calculated risks. We know that not every bet will pay off. The key is to make bets small enough that they don't sink the ship and that we can quickly learn from.
There’s no magical recipe for balancing autonomy and alignment. It’s a dynamic process. We try to give teams a clear destination and the trust to navigate their own path, and then you get the hell out of their way while making sure everyone is talking to each other. It’s messier than a top-down hierarchy, but it’s a lot faster and a lot more fun.
Y: As AI is starting to heavily compete with what individual contributors can do, how do you think about building engineering teams that don’t become obsolete in a matter of months because of AI?
Antoine: I believe in the augmented-engineering approach, where we leverage artificial intelligence to improve and streamline the software-development lifecycle. I don’t have a crystal ball, but today I see AI as an additional tool in the box.
Much like when automation and DevOps took over infrastructure and platforms, GenAI did introduce fear amongst teams: “Am I still relevant?”, “Is my team going to be cut in half?” The reality is that the job itself is constantly evolving with the emergence of new technologies. Engineers who adapt will have more time to focus on higher-level system architecture, design patterns, and code optimization (Keep in mind that AI-generated content is pretty often slightly wrong and needs babysitting.)
Software development is a continuously moving landscape; developers are not expected to do the same job they did 15 years ago. There’s much more responsibility and accountability now, and we require them to have a broader knowledge about the ecosystem they are swimming in (quality, security, operations). Any tool that can help them support this evolution and preserve their cognitive load and context switch should be used.
So this is not about replacing the engineer, but rather about creating a powerful partnership that elevates their role toward creative problem-solving and complex strategic thinking while keeping them away from the boring stuff.
There’s a reason why GenAI agents are called copilots, and not pilots :)
📚 Antoine Jacoutot's Go-To Resources:
People I follow and recommend:
Dr. Luc Julia, especially his articles & talks on AI
A newsletter I rarely skip:
A book that shaped my thinking:
Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
Thank you Antoine for your time and insights!
This interview is part of the “Exec Engineering Dialog” series where I interview seasoned tech leaders on the topics of talent, product, management and culture.
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Yassine.