quotes

I turn
Engineering Managers
into
Leaders worth Following

Hi, I’m Marian. I’m an ex-VP of Engineering and I act as your Software Engineering Leadership Mentor && Fractional Engineering VP.

"My Mission is to empower software companies and individual talent pool in Central Europe 🇨🇿🇸🇰🇵🇱, enabling us to scale and stand shoulder to shoulder with leading software hubs in Berlin 🇩🇪, Amsterdam 🇳🇱 and London 🇬🇧"

🎓 Looking for more? Join our high-quality content Engineering Leaders Community of 550+ #unique talents and live meetups. Grow with us continually, month by month 🚀

Education Impact

Individual Mentoring

00

Mentoring and Coaching

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.
If you think of applying, discover how mentoring works, understand session flows, and ensure alignment with our guidelines.
avatars mentoring reviews
Since 2019, I have helped 85+ exclusive mentees from 7+ countries 🇨🇿 🇺🇸 🇸🇰 🇩🇪 🇬🇧 🇮🇱 🇳🇱 in their engineering leadership journey. 600+ mentoring hours in total. Read the reviews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Marian’s wealth of experience was incredibly valuable to me. In 5 months, Marian has taught me to look beyond daily tasks and set long-term goals. This shift in perspective has greatly enhanced my planning and strategic thinking . Marian’s mentorship has accelerated my learning and influenced my leadership style. Thanks to Marian, I was able to share my insights as a speaker at the Engineering Leaders meetup, an enriching experience in my career path I believe that anyone who has the opportunity to work with Marian will benefit greatly from his experience and guidance.
Jan Vrtiska
Engineering Manager @ Pure Storage
Ondrej Kofron
CTO @Carvago
Marian’s wealth of experience was incredibly valuable to me. In 5 months, Marian has taught me to look beyond daily tasks and set long-term goals. This shift in perspective has greatly enhanced my planning and strategic thinking . Marian’s mentorship has accelerated my learning and influenced my leadership style. Thanks to Marian, I was able to share my insights as a speaker at the Engineering Leaders meetup, an enriching experience in my career path I believe that anyone who has the opportunity to work with Marian will benefit greatly from his experience and guidance.

Four more ways
I can help you

01

Our Community

If you’re a team lead, engineering manager, director, tribe lead, chapter lead, VP, CTO, or if you are involved in software development and company growth, join our Engineering Leaders CZ community.

Are you a speaker interested in suggesting a topic? Submit your idea. If you wish to partner with our community or sponsor a good cause, explore the partnership enablement packages.

02

Fractional CTO/VPE

So far, I’ve helped Central European software companies raise $200+ million.

As a fractional VPE, you can direct me towards any issues within your organization, and I’ll handle them for you. This allows you to leverage the expertise of someone with deep knowledge and the ability to deliver impressive results within a short timeframe. One of the advantages of fractional work is the opportunity to bring in a high level of talent that might otherwise be too expensive or hard to find.

The most requested topics I often cover include Internal Audit and Efficiency Boost, OKRs, Product-Led, Engineering Metrics, Due Diligence, Structural Changes, Career Frameworks, and Time to Value.

03

Manager Workshops

You are a manager or HRBP looking to elevate your leaders. The purpose of the workshops in to empower engineering leads to ship and scale using techniques and lessons acquired through real-world experience. The workshop is highly proactive. Explore the Leadership Foundation and Leadership Master cohort courses.

04

Speaker and Moderator

You are searching for a speaker for your townhall, workshop, podcast, meetup, or conference.
Do you intend to reinforce your message or desire to have a more significant impact on the audience’s mindset and perception? Are you in need of an adept moderator for your event?

Check out my speaker and moderator experience.

Selected Clients

Speaker Impact

Full speaker track record:

Last #12 months in numbers

An look-back of the mentoring sessions and advisory I offer, in data.

My mentoring flow, current number of clients, time allocation and profit data is openly available:

Writer Impact

How to beat OKRs

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

Writing is an excellent way to form my thoughts.

How Do I Work?

My Mentoring Triangle of Strength

01

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.

02

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.

03

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.

A combo of mentoring (talking experience), advisory (putting things to practice and gathering feedback), and continuous learning (cultivating my knowledge) is my third eye. It puts me in an unbeatable spot.

My technical background is an asset. I’ve been there with you 💪. Moving from a developer over architect to a senior manager of 300+ reports. I know how it feels to be an introvert. We speak the same geeky language.

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

Leadership principles Marian Kamenistak