PurePerformance - In the AI Age being Smart is not enough for Tech Leadership with Marian Kamenistak

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

"15 years ago it was enough to be smart - going forward its not a differentiator - being smart will just make you average!". But what is it? What makes great leaders worth following and how do they achieve tripling their value while others keep waiting for their 5% raise?4 years ago Marian Kamenistak launched the Engineering Leadership Community out of Prague, Czech Republic. Feeding from his experience in the Silicon Valley this community has grown to 1500 members with the mission to create "Leaders worth following". Tune in and hear from Marian on how to think and talk about value impact vs being held up with trying to achieve technical perfection. Why its important to build a network around you, the difference between mentorship and management as well as how to proof the value to your leadership that you bring to the organization!Links we discussed todayMarian's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariankamenistak/Engineering Leadership Conference: https://www.elc-conference.io/Engineering Leadership Community: https://www.engineeringleaders.io/The Leadership Pipeline Book: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Pipeline-Build-Powered-Company/dp/0470894563

It's time for Pure Performance! Get your stopwatches ready. It's time for Pure Performance with Andy Grabner and Brian Wilson. Welcome everyone to another Pure Performance Podcast. As you can probably tell, it's one of those rare moments where the opening voice is not Brian Wilson, who typically starts our podcast, but it's Andy Grebner. Brian is hopefully taking a day off today because as the time of the recording, there's a US holiday and I hope people enjoy it. Also, it's early morning here in Europe and I assume, Brian, you're fast asleep, but thank

you for putting out this episode. Now this episode today, very dear to my heart because I got to say over the last two to three months, I made a couple of new friends and I want to call them friends because I was very fortunate enough to be invited to speak at a conference in Prague in the Czech Republic. And there I met our guest today. And before I let him introduce himself, I just want to make sure that folks, I want to make sure that you are knowing who we are dealing with today. So Marian Kamenistak, I hope I got this name kind of correctly, but it's if you read from the LinkedIn profile, building the Silicon Valley in Central Europe, what a great tagline

to have building the Silicon Valley in Central Europe, founder and chief coach at Engineering Leaders Community out of the Czech Republic. Marian, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, as I said, for not just being a business partner, but really a friend. I'm really glad how we kicked it off and how we connected. But now please, Marian, introduce yourself because I'm sure there's much more to tell

than the two taglines from LinkedIn. Yeah, thank you. And thank you again, Andy, for having me here. Yeah, so basically our mission and the mission of our community is to create a Silicon Valley leadership in Central Europe. And it's not just a mission or just an empty sentence. The way how we do it is exactly as Andy has mentioned.

We met in May this year at a general leaders conference in Prague. And it was really astonishing with more than 400 people of attendees and participants. And the venue and the lineup was really excellent. So thank you again, Andy, for you having a clear spot regarding your speaking sequence and I really enjoyed it very much. What we do basically is in the heart of Central Europe, we are building our community of engineering product leaders.

These days we have more than 1,500 people who are our unique physical members. It's nothing like virtual and so on and so forth. On top of that, we are basically making and hosting one meetup per month. And the meetups are really high quality. You can check it at engineeringleaders.io basically. meetup per month and the meetups are really high quality. You can check it at engineeringleaders.io basically. And yeah, that's roughly it because other than that, we do plenty of our own conferences.

We mentioned the academia and learning. We partner with the local university and created some MBA program basically for leadership in IT. And other than that, I focused mainly on entering fractional advisory and I'm basically part of some board advisory, basically organs in a couple of companies here in Central Europe. So that's basically it. Needless to say, me, myself, in my heart, I'm still a developer.

I used to have that keyboard of ZX Spectrum at H11, and I was playing with that since ever, and it's still deep in my mind. Nevertheless, these days, if somebody would ask me to do a code review after my, basically, these days, if somebody would ask me to do a core review after my full request, then I would just hide myself in a corner because that's not something that I'm proficient at these days. Right?

Yeah. So that's basically the overview. And again, thank you, Andy, for having me here. Yeah. I really, I got to say one more word to the conference. And again, thank you're listening in, if you're organizing events, I thought I've never seen this before where people could sign up for mentorship sessions. Can you quickly elaborate on that? So basically the point was to create something, some sort of a different experience as a standard conference of sitting on your back, you know what I mean?

And it's not only the high quality workshops, but also the one-on-one mentoring sessions sit on your back, you know what I mean. It's not only the high quality workshops, but also the one-on-one mentoring sessions. As I was saying, I already have a portfolio of highly experienced people around me who are helping me mentoring specific people, not only regarding the engineering leadership, but also about product management, biometrics, finance, data, AI, whatever comes to your mind. And basically I invited my folks and my partners basically to take part of the conference so that people can have an experience of how it feels having a private mentor,

helping you resolve the questions right on the spot. And that is one thing that I want to basically highlight, which is the difference between mentoring and coaching, although I don't make such a huge difference between the two, but basically, you know how it goes. If somebody's gonna be coaching you, then basically, you might want to end up having your question answered after six sessions.

While mentoring is like, hey Marianne, this is the problem I have, this is the situation. I'm going to ask you more of the questions and we are going to come up with certain solutions and you are going to commit to one of the basically steps to move forward. And that's basically the pace that I want to keep up with people.

And that's the reason why we made it part of our conference to make sure that people gain some sort of a taste of how it feels to have some sort of a, you know, I would say a partner or a buddy next to you, helping you resolve your situations and making you grow exponentially. Yeah, it feels almost like if you think back to both of our patients, which is software engineering, I also have a software engineering background, still love it. It's like you constantly have the opportunity to do some pair programming with somebody. So you have a buddy next to you that can challenge you, that can validate your things, where you can learn from.

I think that's awesome. No, I really love it. that can validate your things, Another thing that I really liked, and hopefully I remember the tagline correctly, I think on your t-shirts that you had, it was something like, leaders worth following. There was like a really nice tagline. Maybe I'm not phrasing it correctly word by word, but it was really interesting to see that you really put a lot of effort on leadership, but not leader as somebody that tells you exactly what to do, but leaders worth following, that inspire people.

I was just fascinated, as I said, and I was so lucky. Yeah, and you have the exact wording, so thank you for keeping that in your mind. Basically what I mean by that is, if I may be very open with you in Europe and mainly in Central Europe, I see certain, I would say differences because I was keen to basically be part of some startups in Silicon Valley as well for a couple of years. And after coming back, I could see pretty significant differences in terms of the, I wouldn't call it management,

leadership and being a leader worth following. And that's something what stuck with me because I don't want to be a manager who just dictates. I want to be someone again again worth following, worth remembering. And the reason why is basically I'm gonna say I was a bastard. I was a bastard being an engineer, being a software developer, because what I was doing is I was just making sure I'm part of an environment that moves me forward, having the right people

around me, having either that's technology and leadership right after. But if I did not have a leaderboard following in my space, or in my workspace, better to say, or we already depleted all the ammunition and the potential, then I was just moving forward to yet another environment and yet another one, and yet another one, and that's what made me strike. Of course, some people might call it like, it's a little bit of a bastard way, and sorry to use this word, I know it's sort of eccentric.

Nevertheless, I think this is the right approach. And making sure that I can understand how it feels to have somebody around worth following make me thinking about how about making myself worth following this way, making myself being a turn magnet, making myself being somebody who people can trust. Basically, only then you can create valuable work and products. That's just my, I would say that's my opinion, as opposed to just saying,

we need to accomplish whatever, however that's called, sprints or roadmap or these sort of things. It doesn't work this way. So that is the difference being worth following. And of course I can start talking monologues here, but I will leave that back to you, Andy, please. No, thank you so much.

And I think your story is interesting because you said you were involved in the Silicon Valley, then you came back to Central Europe. Do you think that we in Central Europe, and I'm not just talking about the Czech Republic, we also in Austria here, we are part of Central Europe. Do you think that the reason why we are also different is because of our experiences in the past and the way we grew up, the way our parents grew up and what they gave us back? Or why do you think we in Central Europe might be different than what you have seen

in the Silicon Valley in the US? Yeah, that's a good question. And I was putting quite a lot of emphasis to find the differences. And basically, of course, I see very specific, I call it situations or problems or differences in between the two. But nevertheless, we need to differentiate between like, you know, how could we put it, the post-communist countries versus Austria, of course. That's yet another thing.

Nevertheless, for example, the way how I run my workshops for engineering managers is that I'm telling them straight away, I see two main differences. The first one is we are not great at having full ownership, We are not great at having full ownership. Meaning, you can of course disagree with certain past strategies and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, after you splash out everything and you come to a commitment, you do whatever it comes to a commitment, you do whatever it comes to, make sure that you accomplish your goal, your outcome, your roadmap, and whatever that could be

represented by. So that is number one thing as opposed to basically just complaining, you know what I mean? Or being some sort of a passive aggressive mode, that doesn't work, right? Nobody's going to promote you because of that. Although it feels nice talking about, you know, complaining throughout launch. And the second thing, sorry for being so direct. And the second thing is, what I found even more important and more crucial and as a difference is that we are not great at talking value and specifically talking money. And I was there as well because I was a 3% top-tall developer. I turned myself into a principal software architect in Silicon Valley and so on and so forth. And I thought that talking what are RabbitMQ

versus ApacheMQ makes a difference. It does not, because nobody's gonna listen to you. Convali and so on and so forth. So that's something that I'm strictly focusing on in order to make sure that people can talk either return on investment or cost of delay and making sure that they understand the difference, the different basically approaches how to translate impact into money because only then the CTO or the CFO of the organization will listen

to you. And of course, there is a secret, I would say, thing that everybody knows, which is if you are splashing an idea out and you will not convince me in 30 seconds about listening further, then basically I push myself into a sort of a passive mode, you know what I mean? Yeah, there is no way you can succeed. Right? So that's my, I would say too many differentiators. Of course, there are there are a couple of others, but full ownership and talking money talking business. It's the main two things or I was gonna say

incompetence is that we have and we need to work on. Yeah. It's interesting. So a couple of thoughts that I had. First coming back to the, you know, you called it post-communist era and obviously in Austria, we have not been in that part of Europe. But on the other side, you could also argue that with our past, maybe with the monarchy where we're all, I think, still very comfortable

and people have basically centrally telling us or making sure that most of us have it good could also still trickle down after that many generations. True, true. Now, the other thing coming back to your talking money and your 30 seconds, like an elevator pitch, right? I think people always talk about what is your elevator pitch? And I believe this is super important to translate this into something that is maybe more present and kind of like an analogy. You have a lot of choices when you open up your television app, like your Netflix

or whatever you use a streaming app, but you're basically browsing through and you decide based on the first 10, 20, 30 seconds, when you get these trailers, whether this is worth spending half an hour or an hour, right? And I really like it. So I think we all need to figure out how can we pitch our value that we want to provide, the value of our technical solution, but what's the real value? Because I see the same thing as you, right? From a technical perspective, but what's the real value? value you couldn't precisely talk money right yeah yeah and I was listen Andy I was part of that you had yeah because me myself I was like a Java man right this is my religion and don't touch it right but only after exactly my experience in

in in the area I found out that you know basically it's just a tooling. It's not a goal. It is just a tooling. And if you are not following the goal, basically then you get lost and you, I would say even decrease your value. So that was a slap to me. To realize that the game is played somewhat differently.

So yeah, and still I see that, like exactly you covered top two use cases regarding the talking money and talking value. The number one is to have something meaningful to say about your hypothesis, your a little pitch towards your audience, towards your CTO or the company. And the second thing that I see very often, and there are people coming back to me with that as, Hey, Marianne, please help me to help me identify my value. Help

me figure out what what's my potential, what I'm worth, so that I don't leave money on the street. Yeah, so that means basically taking this from a technical product idea and then how you translate that into value from you yourself are the product, right? We all are our own product. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then how can... I like the way how you put it,

you yourself, you are the product. I used to say when I'm when I'm entering and teaching people I used to tell them you are an asset. And it's up on you to either you invest into that asset or not. Or if you undervalue that, if you are undervaluing that that asset because of your imposter syndrome or whatever that is, this is something that I see very often. Because I don't know how to put it, but sometimes I see people that are waiting for a cellular race of 5% and hoping for that

for another year, or I'm telling them, okay, you can either wait for a cellular race or you can triple your value in half a year. So the choice is yours, basically. Wake up. Yeah, that's an, mean I need to I'm taking a lot of notes here because I want to make sure that some of these things I can make it into the description also picking out some some taglines so you can either wait for the 5% or you can start realizing what your value is and then

selling it and then triple your value right within a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really what I'm aiming for with basically my clients and sometimes I explain it a bit differently which is even to the companies I'm telling them how come you can expect someone building or generating value if these people that are on their own, they are not aware of their own value, if that makes sense. Yeah. And actually, this reminds me, this whole tripling your value reminds me of your opening

keynote at the conference from David Pavlik, who is the CTO of the Rollit Group. And his talk, I just put it up here, his talk was from growth to impact, how I scaled my conference from David Pavlik who is the CTO of the Rollit Group. I just put it up here. His talk was from growth to impact, how I scaled my personal value 10x. And his stories and how he went through all of the different big names in the software industry. I think from Microsoft to Amazon to Netflix to SpaceX. It was fantastic in his story. to SpaceX. It was fantastic in history. Yeah, yeah. So, and again, like, thank you for raising that up because that's one of the great examples of David. And basically showcasing that it's not a theory. These stories are tangible, basically. And again, either you, as you said,

either you watch Netflix all night, or you basically increase yourself as an asset or you regard yourself as an asset and you invest into that. And of course, David's path is great. Nevertheless, let's be open. There is a lot of failures across that path. is great. basically our building. Is there a difference from a leadership perspective in the digital age than maybe in ages past or in other industries?

Well, you said no. Of course, the pace is getting higher and things are getting faster moving forward. I'm using quite a lot of things and tools, mainly speaking the AI tools that are around us, to make sure that we progress and we build value in a meaningful manner. While on the other hand, I'm deeply convinced that the personal touch, the leadership and the physical presence

will always be here. And listen to me out, I think that these things, especially the physical touch and the personal presence will even get increased in value. Because as we move forward towards some sort of a virtual world, the physical presence will become an asset. And again, if you can translate my thoughts well, basically having a community is an asset as well.

And allowing people to meet is an asset as well. Coming back to the US, I challenge you to find a meaningful job as a developer if you have no positive reference or people around within your network who can help you to get some word of kindness towards another CTO or person you're working with in another company. In Europe, it's still sort of fine, but it's just a matter of time until we find out that that with no valuable network of people around, you can never make it. Although you will have plenty of AI tools around you, but I guarantee you these tools will be available for everyone.

So please wake up. So that's another- So now that things are coming out of the box, and maybe 15 or 10 years ago, it was my case it was just fine to be smart you know what I mean I'm not like super smart of course but these days being smart is not enough and in the future being smart will be smart will just make you average. So that's my vision basically. It might sound scary, I would not say so.

We just need to get ready for it. So that's some very interesting ways of thinking of it, but it makes a lot of sense, right? Because as you said, the AI, what sets us apart as human is being human. What sets us apart from the AI is that we make the effort to build and nurture our communities and our network. Also people trust people because there's a trust that has to be also trust has to be earned. And this is where you need the investment and it's

time that you need to invest in time is the one thing that we cannot buy. So we need to choose wisely where we spend the time and with which communities. I think that that's also very important. Exactly. Like either you spend time watching Netflix. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And sorry for putting this example too watching Netflix. Sorry for putting this example too often. Again, I remember one CTO here in Central Europe that I'm

entering, he was asking me the question like, you know, hey, Marianne, what is the one single thing that you would want to change? You know, going 10 years back? And I was thinking about like, okay, so what should I answer? Like, you know, the systems, the metallurgies, the AI, of course, whatever that is. And then it just came to my mind, which is the one thing that I would change, even smarter 10 years back, is to build relationships much sooner. Because it creates a valuable network of people around you who can help you move forward or

resolve your situations or basically have some, I would say, strong background, natural background, as opposed to, yeah, I'm the smartest person in the world. I can develop code quite fast in high quality, whatever that is, but still sitting in my corner and nobody basically gives a damn about me. And especially, again, 21st century, hey, welcome. and nobody basically gives a damn about me. And especially again, 21st century, hey, welcome, wake up.

If you have no social footprint on the virtual media or the social network, then basically your profile and your value goes down. So if you are so smart, how about you basically showcase that art. or you can argue, yeah, I'm the smartest person in the room, but let me tell you something, I will not promote you as a CTO in my company if you are not visible enough because you're not a fan magnet. Actually, you are, for me, you are an anti-pattern.

And again, sorry for my controversy. That's perfect. Because I wanna see people who create a multiplication effect, not some sort of a, you know, I want to see people who create a multiplication effect, not some sort of a, you know, I'm the person in the room guy, or in the corner, basically, better to say, right? So that basically damages my company's culture. You might be great senior developer,

but I will never promote you to a principal architect or staff person if you have no network around you that you built. And that comes back to the point that you made earlier. I think first of all, I want to say it's perfectly fine if people want to stay in their position where they are and they don't want to grow, then that's fine. What we are talking about here is why are some people complaining about that they're not making a way up, right?

Why, as you said, waiting for the 5% race for a year while others seem to jump ahead and triple their value in the same amount of time. And I think this is, was, was really interesting when it comes to communities. Obviously, you build your community in Prague. I see I'm working a lot with the CNCF, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, right? It's a huge community that lives through people giving back to the community, not just consuming, but as you said, speaking at meetups, running local chapters of the CNCF, then speaking on stage.

And if you speak on stage, you are doing multiple things. A, you're helping the community as a whole to lift up because you're sharing your experience. But also you lift yourself up and coming back to your asset, your product, and you're basically increasing the value because so many more people will know you, will trust you. And this in the end, it seems like a snowball effect in the end, once you get started. But you also need to keep going, right? It's not just like speak once and that's it, but you need to continuously give back to the community. It's a continuous effort, but I would say it's worth it. And let me cover a couple of points coming to my mind.

The number one is that sometimes, and I was there myself, people think like, you need to be, again, super smart to make this work. You don't. I'm not smart myself, or super smart myself. I'm not even smart these days. I'm 46 years old. I'm just experienced.

That's how I used to put it. And the second thing is that it doesn't require a super large amount of effort, right? You just visit or you are part of a network or meetups that you choose. You create the bonds, you start working with people, you start proposing certain, I would say, topics, and all of a sudden, you might want to get an opportunity to be on the stage for, let's say, 10 minutes with a couple of other speakers. And that's a good start, that's a great start. Right?

And I'm really seeking, as a founder of the community, to find these high potential people who have something meaningful to share. Because I'm more than glad to invite them because that's part of the, I would say mission of providing a high quality content. So if you are capable to speak up and have a high quality and meaningful subject

to talk about, some sort of experience, no theory, no bullshit, then let's do it, please. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's not difficult. That's my message. And I thought myself like being 20, 25 years old,

I thought like, you know, this has to be like amazingly difficult to get myself somewhere on the stage. It's not. Just open your mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only difficult thing is the first step, right? The first step is the difficult thing.

Because as you said, some people are afraid that when they are on stage, they will not be good enough. But I always tell people, if you're really telling your own story, it's your story. And that's your experience. And own story, it's your story and it's your experience and you are telling it from your perspective. And so even though there might be people in the audience that have a different opinion on the topic, that's perfectly fine. You're still as long as you stay true to what you're saying, then it's a value to the community

because you are going to give them a different perspective on something that you've experienced yourself. Precisely that. Yeah. So I would rephrase it in a different manner, which is you should avoid having some sort of imposter syndrome or you know, fear of missing out because of your, I would say, worry about how am I going to look and speak and whatever that is, just make it work. I remember myself when I was writing my first blog post,

when I was having a first speech, yes, I was trembling, I was sweating, it was very highly uncomfortable. I think Andy, you know how it feels because you went through that and you go through that quite often. Nevertheless, these are experiences that moves you forward. And either you, and again, sorry for my jargon,

either you shit yourself, and you say, okay, could be better, I'm able to work on that, right? You remember the conference you were in Prague, I was trembling in front of 400 people having a keynote and shaking. Nevertheless, we made it, we made it through, then there was an amazing number of people and speakers with high value content. And people are extremely happy about it.

I know that for next year I need to still improve certain aspects nevertheless that's how it works. Yeah, but you made the big step in putting yourself into an uncomfortable situation which is something where you learn the most. Right? I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. And I like talking to people and to my mentees basically, yes, sometimes I'm wearing a diaper. You know what I mean? Because yeah, that's what it is. Right? So, and you wake up next day,

you know how to make it work for the future and you move on, right? And of course there are like the good, I would say it's a positive thing because you know, statistically speaking, that there is 90% of people, especially here in Central Europe, who are, and again, apologies for my jargon, shooting their pants in their corner,

watching Netflix, right? And if you just, you do some sort of little step ahead, statistically speaking, you are already a winner. Yeah. Yeah, that's very, very true. And obviously it's great to have. So folks, if you are from, you know, Central Europe, if you are from the Prague region,

you have a great community, the engineering leaders community in Prague. How long have you been doing this now? It's four years and it's not a small thing because we started it with throughout COVID as virtual sessions after me coming back to Prague. And then we were running public. One, it was possible to do so. So yeah, and now like it's not only Marian,

it's Amy helping me with everything full time and so on and so forth. So it's already a movement. It's a body. It's not a single person. And the funny thing is that we tend to basically scratch my face out of it so that it's not only Mario being part of the community and the founder as such because there are so many

people around who are helping us with that and they really do deserve their spot and our full respect. Yeah. And I'm also just looking at your events calendar of your community. You really meet in person. I think that's very important now. You meet in person. I was there after the conference a couple of weeks later.

I came back to the Meetups 26 platform engineering in the wild. I remember that it was really great. And since then you had from busy to better make space for learning while delivering and then upcoming one is actually later this week as the time of the recording. Show me the ROI selling engineering ideas without the bullshit. Yeah, it's fantastic. Folks, if you can see these topics are like sort of touching. Yeah, they are. These are the things that we want to run through.

And the good thing is that because of the fact that I'm entering like 16 people in parallel, I know very well what their pain points are and what are the subjects that are actually pretty attractive to open and to cover. Yeah. Cool. Marianne, kind of trying to find the closing here and also a little bit of a recap. I really, first of all, thank you so much for making the time. I know you've been busy days and it's great that you take an hour out of your day. I'm really fortunate that you, back in the days, you actually approached me to say, Andy, do you want to join our community do you want to present I'm so thankful that you ate it and B I'm also

very happy that I accepted back then and that I made it back to Prague for the meetup thank you so much I also like that you what you said about we as engineers right first of all if you're extremely smart, smart alone does not differentiate you anymore. I think that's a very important topic. What differentiates us if we start building these connections, if we start going out of our comfort zone, if we are contributing back to the community, if we build a network, if we surround us with people that can actually lift us up and that

eventually we can then lift up. I think this is super important. And this is where when you do this, you're moving away from sitting and waiting for the next race versus you will be lifted up and you will your value will be recognized and will be appreciated. And I think that's just really really great lessons learned. Amen to that. Consider yourself as an asset. Yeah. Thank you Indy for having me. It was my pleasure and I think next time when I see you in Prague again I think it's beer time as well. Yeah or whenever I know I've learned. I mean this's beer time as well.

This is for me the funniest story of all. I asked you how did you actually find me? Why do you find a guy from Linz? You said when you go skiing you drive through Linz and you saw the Diner Trace office next to the Autobahn and that kind of thing. That's true. That's a true story and you know the best friendships come out of nowhere. You know what I mean. Exactly. So I appreciate it very much Andy. So thank you again for having me and I look forward to meeting you and all the other partners and members of our community and the conference. Looking forward to see you. Thank you so much folks. Hopefully this was another insightful episode. I know Brian Wilson couldn't be here

with us today. Nevertheless, thanks for listening. Give us feedback. Check out all the links in the description of this podcast. Leave a comment. We are also posting this on LinkedIn and on other social networks. And remember, step out of your comfort zone, try to get on stage, tell your story, build a network. See you next time. Bye bye.