Engineering-Management on Ryan Orban

The CTO Field Guide

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

The CTO Field Guide is a structured reference for technical leaders — people in CTO, VP of Engineering, or senior engineering leader roles navigating the operational challenges of the job. The focus is practical: how to hire senior engineers, when to rewrite vs. refactor, how to structure engineering teams, when to intervene in technical decisions, how to interface with the board and investors. Unlike the many how to be a leader books that stay at the inspirational level, field guide formats address what actually happens in the work.

Engineering Manager Resources

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

ryanburgess/engineer-manager is a GitHub repository by Ryan Burgess (engineering manager at Netflix) that curates resources for engineering managers. It covers the full lifecycle of EM concerns: transitioning from individual contributor to management, hiring and team building, 1:1 meetings, technical leadership, and engineering culture.

Awesome CTO

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

Awesome CTO is a curated resource list by Kuchin targeting Chief Technology Officers and senior engineering leaders, especially in startup contexts. Unlike generic engineering reading lists, it’s organized around the actual problems a CTO faces: building and scaling engineering teams, navigating technical debt, setting technical vision, communicating with non-technical executives, hiring senior engineers, and making build vs buy decisions.