# Questions to ask a CTO candidate about cloud spend

> Use questions to ask a CTO candidate about cloud spend with real invoices, growth assumptions, and simple checks to spot real cost judgment.

## Why a low cloud bill can mislead

A low cloud bill does not prove a CTO made smart decisions. Sometimes the product is still small, traffic is light, and weak parts of the setup have not started to hurt yet. Infrastructure that looks cheap at 500 users can get expensive at 50,000 if the system depends on too many managed services, duplicate data stores, or wasteful background jobs.

Credits make this even harder to judge. A candidate may point to a tiny monthly bill, but that number means little if a cloud vendor covered half of it with startup credits or discount programs. When the credits end, the real cost shows up all at once.

The opposite problem shows up too. Someone says they