---
title: "CTO Sounding Board: A Second Opinion Without Politics"
description: "Your board is not technical, your peers compete for hires, your CEO wants certainty. Where a CTO takes the two hardest calls of the week. Public pricing."
url: "https://www.marian.coach/cto-sounding-board/"
lang: "en"
image: "https://www.marian.coach/_astro/mentoring-02.BQRj2gmR_27Xf7H.jpg"
---

Marian Kamenistak · CTO · VP Engineering · Head of Engineering

# CTO Sounding Board: A Second Opinion Without Politics

Most roles come with a natural second opinion. The CTO's options all arrive loaded: the board reads doubt as weakness, peers at other companies compete for the same hires, and your CEO wants the answer rather than the process that produced it.

This is the one people admit to last, usually about eighteen months later than would have been useful.

![An engineering leader talking with a mentee across a small table at a community mentoring session.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/mentoring-02.BQRj2gmR_10nbng.webp)

## Why every second opinion available to you is loaded

The exec coach your CEO hired is a business coach, and will ask you good questions about how the week is going when what you need is somebody who has run capacity planning for forty engineers. The CTO Slack groups are useful for links and weak on your specific call, since nobody there carries your context and the people who reply fastest are rarely the ones you wanted. Books get written by people whose company was not your company.

What's left is one person outside your org chart, with no stake in how you come across, who has held the seat. Sixty minutes every fortnight, built around the two hardest calls on your plate that week rather than around a curriculum. The pattern data from 3,662 sessions matters mainly because it means I've watched your particular situation resolve well and badly a number of times, and can tell you which way it usually goes.

Every session ends with a written decision or a concrete next step on something real. If one doesn't, it wasn't worth your hour and you shouldn't be charged for it, which is what the under-7 rule is for.

## Working it 1:1

![Marian Kamenistak, mentor to CTOs and VPs of Engineering](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/marian-about.BisGE32e_mbivh.webp)

Sixty minutes every fortnight, which is the cadence this one lives on. I have sat in the seat: helped build Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn from 8 to 80 teams, was an advisor to Manta (acquired by IBM), and spent 3 years in the Bay Area as Principal Software Architect at Databricks. The pattern data comes from 3,662 1:1 leadership sessions with engineering leaders in 17+ countries. Mentees rate every session from 0 to 10 right after it. Since 2024 the average is 9.17.

Pricing is public: 395 EUR per session, or 1,975 EUR per quarter (6 sessions over 3 months, 5 paid + 1 free). Every package is 10% off if you build the inquiry [with my AI](https://www.marian.coach/mentoring-chat/): under 10 minutes, the quarter at 1,778 EUR. ELC members get the same 10%. You only pay for a session you rate 7 out of 10 or higher. [Full pricing](https://www.marian.coach/pricing/).

[Book the free 30-min intro →](https://www.marian.coach/meet)Or email [marian@marian.coach](mailto:marian@marian.coach)

Related reads

-   [Communities of practice for tech leaders](https://www.marian.coach/blog/community-of-practice-for-engineering-managers/)
-   [Why senior leaders need an outside voice](https://www.marian.coach/blog/from-vpe-to-solo-mentoring-year-one/)
-   [Working with an advisor: what helps](https://www.marian.coach/blog/consultant-advisory-guide-on-client-ground/)

## The other situations CTOs bring

-   [The board wants a delivery number →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-board-delivery-answer/)
-   [First 90 days in an inherited org →](https://www.marian.coach/new-cto-first-90-days/)
-   [Technical due diligence before a raise →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-technical-due-diligence/)
-   [AI adoption pressure from the board →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-ai-adoption-pressure/)
-   [Every decision routes through you →](https://www.marian.coach/cto-decision-bottleneck/)

All six, plus the questions CTOs ask most: [CTO coaching & mentoring](https://www.marian.coach/cto-mentor/)

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