You're responsible for the team, not the code. That's a harder job.
The skills that made you a great engineering manager are not the skills you need now. The transition is real, and most people underestimate it.
The VP of Engineering role looks like a promotion. And it is — in title, scope, and responsibility. What it actually represents is a career change. You move from a domain where your impact was visible — your teams shipped, your managers grew, your org functioned — to one where the signals are slower, the variables are messier, and the feedback loop spans quarters, not sprints. That is a much harder feedback loop to work with.
The VPs of Engineering who scale well through their first year are the ones who find that feedback loop quickly — who build the habits, the relationships, and the perspective that the role actually demands. That usually requires someone outside the company who can see what you can't yet see about yourself.
What we work on
Three challenges that define your first year as VP Engineering.
These are structural challenges of the role, not personal failings. Everyone hits them. The question is what you do when you do.
- The technical debt conversation You know the debt is real. You know it's slowing everything down. Getting the business to allocate time and budget to address it requires a different kind of argument — one that speaks in risk and velocity, not architecture. How to have that conversation without losing credibility either way.
- Managing the CTO relationship If you have a CTO above you: how do you stay in sync without being micromanaged, build your own authority without creating turf wars, and position yourself for the next move in your career? This relationship shapes everything, and most people don't invest in it deliberately enough.
- Building engineering culture deliberately Culture is not what you say you value — it's what you tolerate and what you reward. Someone once challenged me because a member of my team answered "Nobody" when asked who their boss was — they meant it as a criticism; I took it as the highest compliment. How to build a team that runs on trust, not on you being in the room — and how to know when the culture you built is the wrong one for the next stage.
I have hired and led over 200 engineers across six companies — scaling from zero to a full R&D organisation at Jolla, and building a financial services engineering unit from zero to MVP in nine months at Utopia Music. I know what this transition asks of you, and I know what it costs when it goes wrong.
Weekly or fortnightly 1:1 calls · 6-month engagement · One spot currently available
Book a free 30-minute call →Also relevant: First-time CTO mentoring → · CPO and VP Product mentoring → · Imposter syndrome →