testimonials
Marian excels at taking the theoretical knowledge you can read about in books and on the internet and putting it into practice in your field. You can get lost in so many ways when it comes to bringing technological innovation into companies and getting it accepted by customers and users. I wanted to accelerate this change within a few months, and he has done just that. We are a prime example of how internal development teams can bring new products and services to the traditional organisation and truly digitise the old-fashioned business with rapid software product discovery, delivery and adoption. I am happy to discuss in more detail how he was the important part of this change.
CIO at OPT OnDemand
Michal Kejzlar
I started working with Marian just before our start-up, Manta, was acquired by IBM. Marian helped me during the 8-month integration period to navigate a completely new environment and focus on what’s most important.
We covered many operational topics, such as how to properly communicate the integration timeline to my team, how to ensure their smooth transition, how to have a clear roadmap and delivery milestones, or how to communicate with my new colleagues. But we also discussed more general topics such as change management, decision-making processes, communicating ideas, presenting successes, or communicating in critical situations. Sometimes he just confirmed my direction, but in many cases he offered different points of view that helped me and my team to get through this complicated period more smoothly.
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.
Michal Danilák
Marian has a great success story and knowledge behind him. By learning from him, you can easily save yourself or your organization from many dead ends and use shortcuts to succeed.
When I first took a leadership position in my career and became a tech lead, I was very fortunate to come across Marian, who mentored me for about six months. Thanks to him, I was able to quickly ramp up in my new role, feel more confident, and be more productive when facing challenges I hadn’t encountered before.
Every session was driven by my current needs at that moment, but I appreciated that Marian had well-thought-out and structured curriculum notes and examples he could reach for when we discussed a specific topic. His resources appeared to be pretty much bottomless. These included OKRs, planning in general, prioritization, 1on1s, perf reviews, navigating tech lead responsibilities, and many more.
In a relatively short period, Marian helped me not only vastly enhance my knowledge, but also imbue me with his never-ending drive and energy. He struck me not only as a great mentor, but a person I’d happily collaborate with in pretty much any context. Thank you Marian for making me a better tech lead right from the start!
Senior tech lead @ Apify | ex-(Lyft SWE, Facebook / Palantir / Microsoft SWE intern) | Cambridge & ETH alumni
Matej Hamas
There is no other mentor like Marian. Each session, each talk we had was inspiring and full of practical recommendations. He helped me to switch thinking from what i want to do as engineer to what actually helps the product and the team. I started applying his recommendations and not only it starts to bring value to the product it feels so good. Thank you Marian.
Improving things at Ataccama
Marian has been mentoring me for a year and a half, and during this time, he has helped me immensely. I reached out to Marian when I took on a new role as an engineering manager. I never imagined how much he would help me quickly get oriented in this position. What I appreciate the most is that no matter what topic I bring up in our mentoring sessions, Marian always has practical and actionable advice. We’ve covered a variety of topics, for example:
Layoff / Hiring / Onboarding:
In my new role, after just four months, I had to let go of a significant number of people who were also my friends. Marian provided invaluable guidance on how to approach this difficult task. I was able to part ways with everyone on good terms, and we still keep in touch.
Hiring:
He thoroughly prepared me on how to approach hiring and what to pay attention to. One of my successes is that candidates, even when not hired, have given feedback that the interview was one of the most pleasant experiences they had.
Performance Review, IDP, Goals:
He boosted my understanding and explained the principles of why we conduct performance reviews and what people should take away from them.
Communication with CxO Levels:
At one point, I found communication with CxO levels challenging. Marian gave me essential strategies and insights that significantly improved my interactions.
Scaling and Consistency:
He helped me build a solid foundation as an engineering manager, ensuring scalability and consistency in my team.
We’ve tackled many other topics as well. I’m grateful that Marian came into my life, and if anyone is considering improving their skills and career, I highly recommend reaching out to Marian.
David Jerabek
Václav Ryška
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! 
CTO at Apify, the web scraping and RPA platform.
Marian helped me to stabilize and mature our engineering in Apify after a period of growth. In mentoring, we focused on many areas across product-engineering cooperation, career framework, team alignment, and agility. But mainly, he changed how I view my role and the role of the engineering department in the organization.
Marek Trunkát
Oleg Smirsky
Marian was my mentor for 3 months and I’ve learned a lot from him – communication with my own team and stakeholders, managing improvement plan in the team, hiring of new people, and overall teams stabilisation. Marian has experience from multiple scale up companies, growing from 30 to 100+ people and that’s experience he can pass on to engineering managers and engineering directors. What I’ve appreciated a lot is directness and honesty in mentoring, challenging my own beliefs of what is possible and at the same time being very human oriented.
I would recommend Marian as a mentor to anybody who really wants to grow in managerial role as few hours per week I’ve invested are several months saved on the journey.
Marian is a true professional with vast experience. I was pleased to work, learn, and discuss essential development matters such as SDLC, OKRs, and team management tactics with Marian at our 15+ sessions. I admire how Marian is organized and his passion for deep diving into diffrent areas of expertise. I recommend Marian with complete trust.
Idan Fridman
Matthijs Welle
Marian is an experienced and polished software architect with excellent communication and interpersonal skills. I had the fortunate opportunity of creating an engaging and productive working relationship with him soon after joining the company as CTO.
The intersection of his technical background and his well-rounded nature allowed us to drive a higher level of strategic thinking across the engineering organization.
David Edwards
Rasheed Raya
When you start as the first agile coach in a company where you have more than 100 developers then your challenge to find out your way is real, luckily I had Marian as my manager at that time where he gave me all the support I needed and also he wanted to set me up for success.
By giving me the space, time, insights, and most importantly the trust in what I can bring really gave me all the energy I needed.
By having Marian as a leader and a true enabler I never hesitated to experiment with ways of working, practices or strategies.
Senior agile coach | Kanban enthusiast | GlassHalfFull
I worked with Marian for a little over 6 months, and right from our first call I realised this was going to be a fruitful and insightful coaching opportunity.
Our sessions where always collaborative and the discussions bidirectional, informal yet professional. Marian has a wealth of knowledge and experience in leadership and software development management and he was always able to jump into any kind of topic or question i had, offering practical and proven solutions to problems.
I personally look forward to future opportunities to work with Marian, and can only strongly recommend him if you are looking for mentor or coach.
Ahmed Samir Saleh
Jiri Sloup
I had the pleasure of being mentored by Marian. He provided me with guidance and valuable tips during my transition into a manager position. As a skilled mentor, Marian was able to guide me through various topics and offer particularly practical advice. I highly appreciate the time he dedicated to me, and it undoubtedly had a significant impact on my professional growth. I wholeheartedly recommend Marian.
Jan Vrtiska
Ondrej Kofron
Over a six-month period, Marian served as my mentor and coach, during which time he greatly enhanced my ability to concentrate. Our focus shifted from day-to-day tasks to strategic thinking. I’ve improved how I manage my schedule and communicate with various stakeholders, both within and outside my organisation. Their appreciation of my work has significantly increased.
I particularly value Marian’s knack for highlighting the important issues and identifying the minor problems that distract me.
Martin Damovsky
Ondrej Stastny
Marian’s contribution was crucial in formulating a set of recommendations that were documented in the final audit report. His insights helped ensure that our architecture could scale to accommodate an expected annual increase of users annually. The final document not only presented a confidence score assessing the system’s current capabilities but also outlined necessary architectural enhancements and associated timelines and costs.
Additionally, Marian’s recommendations extended beyond technical solutions, offering strategic advice on improving the overall robustness of the system.
It was a pleasure to work with Marian on this critical project, and I am confident in his ability as an auditor and systems architect. His contributions have left a lasting positive impact on our operations.
Chief Digital Officer @TrinityBank, Driving Technical Excellence & Innovation