Aviv Ben-Yosef

Frustrated that you don't get time to work on tech debt and improving infra? Working at IBM was my career's peak no-business-contact. I had a blast working on internal tooling, and without any business demands, was left to do what I pleased. Naturally, as

The senior engineering staff was in a meeting with stakeholders. Everyone from engineering was exhausted after handling a nightmare of a week with a project that blew up. It was a project that was specifically spun off the regular work as a task force, so

I sat down with a CTO for the first time. Their co-founder and CEO was worried and wanted to support the CTO. We had a nice chat. I asked a few questions. We parted ways without any drama. A few days later, the CTO was out. That's a good thing. They made

"Why did that take so long?" Cue the blame shifting. "Product wasn't ready on time/Sales overpromised things/Customer Success didn't answer our last email asking for explanations." Every fact there might be true. Perhaps you can even produce the relevant

The CTO was pretty proud of the org's velocity. I asked what the company's vision was. Without hesitation, he started listing things like shipping a major feature, landing an enterprise client, SOC2 compliance, etc. "That's the roadmap; I asked for the vi

When our kids started at their new school when we moved to Rome, they were stunned. They didn't imagine things could work this differently. They never complained about the old way, because they couldn't picture another. But once their eyes were opened, th

Work without a clear outcome, finish line, appetite, or milestones expands until it consumes the quarter. "Why isn't it live yet?" "It turned out to be more complicated," the CTO says. Or another priority got in the way. The conversation quickly becomes a

It's sprint review. A team "pulls out" work finished a couple of weeks ago, presented as fresh. Everyone in the room half-knows. That's how teams deteriorate fast, and startups become political. Let's create a healthier org. Fake It Till You Break It Star

Everyone's acting like AI rewrote the leadership playbook. It didn't. Some tactics have shifted, but the core practice of leadership remains. Here are some axioms for effective tech leaders I've collected over the years. They've stood the test of time and

It's been six months since we moved to Italy. I've been collecting different thoughts and thought I'd share some of them. Disclaimer: This is what we're seeing in our nice neighborhood in Rome. Our…