CTO Field Notes#

CTO field notes - concise, practical lessons from building and scaling engineering: trade-offs, failures, and repeatable practices (hiring, onboarding, team structure, architecture, observability, incidents). Short, actionable entries you can apply immediately.

Latest Articles#

2026-07-19 The Shape of the Team Is Changing

2026-06-21 Engineering Metrics in the Age of AI

2026-05-24 Evals Are the New Tests

2026-04-26 Code Was Never the Bottleneck

2026-04-05 Staying One Step Ahead

2026-03-15 The Roadmap Problem No One Admits

2026-02-25 Predictable Delivery in an Unpredictable World

2026-02-15 De-Risking Big Bets Without Killing Innovation

2026-01-25 Velocity Is the Product

2026-01-06 Shipping in Uncertainty: Field Notes on Startup SDLC

2026-01-03 Technical Debt Is a Tool

2026-01-01 Refactoring Is How You Keep Moving Fast

2025-12-27 4 Musts of Building a New Feature

Aviv Zaken

Founder | CTO | Engineering Leader | Entrepreneur