Netflix: High-performing teams
“I have no time to grow my teammates. We have to deliver … I can’t keep up with the pace anymore.” 😔
Hi, I’m Marian. I’m an ex-VP of Engineering and I act as Software Engineering Leadership mentor && fractional advisor.
I started coding 
at age 11. I progressed from a dev role to a team lead to a principal architect.
While spending a couple of years in startups of Silicon Valley, Mountain View, I naturally transitioned into software engineering management to make a more significant impact through leadership, leading 30+ of teams to the top, consistently delivering 80%+ of my teams’ roadmap.
Explore the 1st year of my mentorship path or my engineering journey 🚀
MentorING
impact
You’re looking for a partner in crime who will help you grow your team(s) and validate your thoughts. Somebody who’s been there, knows how it feels and will set you up for success on the timeline.
You want to gain trust to your teams, stand on both feet, and move away from operational pressure to thinking systematically / strategically.
Raising Engineering Managers is a challenge. Each person has a different starting point, path, and motivation why to turn into a Leader worth Following.
My mission is to
Elevate engineering leaders TO GROW AND DO PRODUCT BETTER.
Do you wish to know more? For inspiration, explore the topics mentees ask the most:
If you think of applying, discover how mentoring works, understand session flows, and ensure alignment with our guidelines:
I advise/help companies to boost their engineering org ecosystem to build products better.
If you’re intrigued to succeed in a specific company-wide topic: OKRs, product-led, Engineering metrics, internal audits, due diligence, structural shifts, career frameworks, and agility.
See the advisory case studies:
Year #2023 in numbers
An look-back of the mentoring sessions and advisory I offer, in data.
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Mentoring volume 317 sessions
From July 2022-June 2023
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Size 26 mentees
26 diverse mentees from 16 distinct #companies or individuals.
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duration 7.3 months
Maintained an average of 7.3 months of cooperation.
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composition 52 + 19 +29%
52% debutant engineering managers, 19% mid-level managers, 29% at CTO/CPO ranks.
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global reach 🇨🇿 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇸🇰🇮🇱
64% from the #czechrepublic, followed by 12% each from #US & #slovakia, 6% UK, and 3% each from #poland & #israel.
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inbound 74% WoM
74% word of mouth, 17% social media, 9% website.
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feedback 8.9 NPS
8.9 #NPS Score since feedback gathering started in Jan 2023.
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advisory 79 days
Volume: 79 days billed in 4 firms. Scope: Engineering metrics, audits, due diligence, structural shifts, career frameworks, and agility. Contract duration: 2–6 months.
Since 2020, I have helped 55+ exclusive mentees from 7+ countries 
in their engineering leadership journey.
Read the reviews. 
in their engineering leadership journey.
Read the reviews. Marian helped me a lot in my beginnings as a manager. He designed a company-wide program for beginning managers at Mews which in my view makes Mews one of the best companies for managers where to start. He helped me to avoid many initial mistakes and gave a lot of useful advices for the future.
Marian is a true leader with human approach worth following. Thank you! 
Václav Ryška
Engineering Manager @ Mews
Michal Danilák
Co-Founder & CTO at Monitora.
Marian has been incredibly helpful in my professional development. In my conversations with him, he helped me transition from an operational role to a more strategic one. He not only showed me how to grow a team, but also emphasized the importance of understanding the “why” behind it. In each session, he provided me with practical tips and recommendations for tools and other valuable resources.
Marian has a wealth of knowledge and experience, and is always willing to share it with others. I highly recommend him as a mentor to anyone looking to improve their leadership and management skills.
Marian has a wealth of knowledge and experience, and is always willing to share it with others. I highly recommend him as a mentor to anyone looking to improve their leadership and management skills.
Selected Clients
SpeakER
impact
Set up engineering leaders up for success
Scriptease podcast
🎯 OKRs in Software Engineering
Panel discussion
Personal growth:
Learn or Die 
Scriptease podcast
Performance reviews how to
ProgramHRovani podcast
Plato Circle class
Plato
WRITER
impact
VP of Engineering @ Mews – A look back on my 1st year
Life is fun! Joining a new company in April 2020 couldn’t have been easier: The Prague HQ office got closed due to the virus whose name we shall not mention....
How to Make Your Teams Beat OKRs
Practically speaking, after the OKR system is introduced to the company, most people have the impression of being on a runaway train. The Q3 goals have barely started and in...
📚 Learn or Die – My Daily Learning Habit to Beat the Sleepers
At work, do you need to be a stronger weightlifter to outdo more senior guys? Not necessarily. The difference lies in learning.
How to Excel in Engineering management
Stay focused and invest your time into improvements of a bigger scale. Don’t stay at the level of resolving small daily issues, which results in hundreds of items in your Trello...
How to Build Trust with Engineering Teams
In engineering management, my vision is to create a productive software delivery environment that developers are proud to work in, with a focus on tangible outcomes across the company.
Writing is an excellent way to form my thoughts.
Am I Worth your Trust?
My mentoring strategy puts me in an unbeatable spot.
A combo of mentoring (talking experience), advisory (putting things to practice and gathering feedback), and continuous learning (cultivating my knowledge) is my third eye.
My technical background is an asset. I’ve been there with you 💪. Moving from a developer over architect to a senior manager of 100+ reports. I know how it feels to be an introvert. We speak the same tech language.
#1️⃣ Learning
I invest one day a week into my learning routine: reading loads of material, blog posts, writing, listening to podcasts, or speaking at various events, meetups, conferences, podcasts, and panel discussions.
It is tempting to abandon my learning day to earn more, but I believe I’d shortly end up talking about waterfall, mainframes and agile manifesto.
#2️⃣ Mentoring
I dedicate two days a week to 1-hour mentoring sessions, 3–4 sessions daily. The rest is preparation and operational work.
If I give up on mentoring, I will weaken my network and individual leadership.
#3️⃣ Advisory
I spend two days weekly as a fractional advisor/CTO. Scope: Engineering metrics, internal audits, due diligence, structural shifts, career frameworks, and agility.
If I leave advisory, I will have zero opportunity to experience different situations and various client models to learn from and talk theory with no actual practice in the field. In essence, seeing what clients have built widens my knowledge.
Curious about what I read?
Transparency.
Create the right communication channels and open delivery & quality reports.
Consistency.
Define the trajectory. Keep the vector direction and stick to it, unless the strategy changes.
Lead by example.
Teach and grow others by delegating. Walk the walk. Learn continuously.
Kaizen.
Discuss improvements, not status updates. Limit the number of parallel streams.
My principles
THE WAY I UNDERSTAND
AN ENGINEERING ORG ECOSYSTEM
AN ENGINEERING ORG ECOSYSTEM
Leadership.
We’ll survive the growth only if we create the right foundation based on leaders worth following. Processes will not save the world.
Strategy.
Ensure there is a live product and technical strategy people refer to. Connect the dots between the vision, mission, strategy, initiatives, and epics, up to developers’ tasks.
Cooperation.
Work in trios: product lead & engineering lead & design lead. Close the gap between product and engineering discovery and delivery. Build trust and assign autonomy.
Principles.
We have people compatible with our principles: be it company principles, technical or product principles. Build an environment where people are safe if they follow the principles.
Brand awareness.
Talent attracts talent. Build your brand and the hiring pipeline. Work with community management. Engage people to blog posting, meetups, speaking, hackatons, conferences, and more. Cooperate with your talent acquisition team.
Delivery.
Guarantee the contract of delivering 80+% of the roadmap. Average companies deliver ~ 50-60% of their goals. Gain a competitive advantage by having efficient teams.