Field notes
Notes from PortalBrook advisory work: CTO decisions, engineering process experiments, and delivery habits worth examining.
Essays for engineering leaders who prefer concrete practice over generic leadership slogans.
2 August 2026
Hiring bars for the first engineering manager
What CTOs should test when promoting or hiring the first dedicated engineering manager in a growing product company.
18 July 2026
Incident reviews that change next week’s work
How to structure post-incident conversations so action items survive the next planning cycle.
3 June 2026
Diagnosing a stuck code review habit
Signals that review lag is a process problem rather than a tooling shortage—and experiments that teams can run in two weeks.
12 May 2026
When a CTO should refuse a roadmap request
A practical filter for technical leaders under pressure to accept every commercial promise without capacity to deliver.