The person who has already had the job you are about to have.
An hour a month on your agenda, not mine — the transition you are in the middle of, the conversation you are avoiding, and the career decision you are pretending is a job decision.
Mentoring is measured in the choices you did not make badly. It is slower than coaching and it compounds.
Engineer to tech lead, tech lead to EM, PM to group PM, EM to director, director to CTO. I have made most of these transitions and most of the associated mistakes.
Every senior manager has one. Having nowhere to put it is how good people make avoidable decisions.
Who it is for
- People mid-transition — newly promoted, or about to be.
- People crossing the aisle — an engineer moving into product, or a PM taking on a technical org. Rare, and rarely supported.
- First-time function builders — the first PM, the first data hire, the first manager of managers.
- People who want to think out loud with someone who has no stake in their internal politics.
The shape of it
- Format
- 60 minutes a month, remote
- Between
- Async questions, answered properly
- Commitment
- Six months minimum
I hold a CTO seat day to day. That is the point: you are not being taught by someone describing a job they left, and the material is drawn from a job I am still doing.
What actually happens
An hour a month on what is actually in front of you — not a syllabus. Questions in between, and written notes after every session.
- A written start
What you want to be true in six months. Vague is allowed; unwritten is not.
- Monthly, on your agenda
You bring the topic. I have opinions but no syllabus — that is the difference between mentoring and coaching.
- Notes after every session
Decisions, actions, next checkpoint. The notes are the deliverable; they are what makes the value visible six months later.
- An honest review at six months
Including whether you still need this. The aim is that you need me less, not more.
What you leave with
- A written record of every decision you worked through and why.
- Fewer avoidable mistakes in a transition that most people make alone.
- A standing outside read on your own career, from someone with no stake in your company.
- Eventually: not needing it.
What it costs
€400 a month including VAT, six-month minimum — €2,400 for the full commitment. A flat monthly fee for one person, and the number you pay if it is your own money.
Partly, yes — and you should. Most of what I teach has been written down well by somebody. If a book solves your problem I would rather tell you which one than sell you an hour; the reading list goes out either way, and it is the cheapest thing I give anybody.
Here is what a book cannot do, and it is the whole of the difference:
- It cannot answer the follow-up. The value is almost never in the principle. It is in the second question — yes, but mine reports to the CFO — and a book has no answer to that because it was written for everyone.
- It has not read your situation. Bring the actual estimate, the actual architecture decision, the actual person who used to be your peer. Generic advice is easy to agree with and almost impossible to apply, which is why so much of it gets read and nothing changes.
- It will not disagree with you. You can finish a book with your original plan intact and a warm feeling of confirmation. That is the failure mode nobody notices. A conversation can push back, and most of the value is in the place where it does.
- It cannot tell you which of three plausible options survives your organisation. Books are good at what holds in general. They are bad at what is true of your company on a Tuesday, and that is usually the decision you are actually stuck on.
- You have already read the book. Most people who arrive here have. The gap is rarely knowledge. It is the confidence to act on it against someone more senior who disagrees.
If the first session tells you the answer was in a book after all, that is a good outcome and a cheap one. I will say so.
Is this the right thing for you?
Thirty minutes. You describe what is going wrong; I tell you which of these actually fits, including when the answer is none of them.