Engineering Leadership

A 3-tier succession planning framework for engineering orgs, with a 90-day sprint for accelerating candidates from potential to ready. Based on succession plans built at 4 companies.

The CTO's real job in product development isn't attending every meeting or making every technical call. It's connecting feasibility, viability, and capacity while letting EMs handle the day-to-day.

Four years of data from a fully remote engineering team across 4 time zones. Specific metrics on productivity, retention, and onboarding with the frameworks that actually worked.

A structured 30-60-90 day framework for handling engineering underperformance. Based on 14 real cases with a 64% success rate, starting with diagnosis before intervention.

Seven leadership antipatterns that look reasonable on the surface but quietly destroy engineering teams. Each one includes specific signals, real failure stories, and the framework I use to correct it.

Most build vs buy decisions rely on gut instinct and flawed spreadsheets. Here's a scored framework (CORE) I've used across 130+ decisions to consistently make the right call.

Most architecture reviews are theater. Here's a 4-step process with 4 mandatory questions that catches real problems before they reach production.

Senior engineers leave managers who treat them like advanced ICs. Here are 7 mistakes new VPs make and the TRUST model to retain top talent.

Most technical strategy documents die in Confluence. Here's a 2-3 page format with 5 decisions max that engineers actually reference and follow.

Most engineering reorgs are leadership failure disguised as structural change. Here's why they fail and the ORBIT checklist to do them right.

Every metric will be gamed. Here's a three-layer evaluation system that measures delivery, decisions, and team health without creating perverse incentives.

A 90-day playbook for new engineering managers. Listen for 30 days, fix for 30 days, build for 30 days. With specific scripts and frameworks.

Most technical investment pitches fail because engineers speak tech and execs speak business. Here's the RICE-T framework that wins budget.

Engineering culture dies during hypergrowth unless you treat it as infrastructure. Here's the 4-Document Culture Kit that actually scales.

A practical playbook for adopting AI coding tools without tanking code quality. Includes the PACE framework and specific quality gates.