Consulting
Engineering leadership is a skill.
I work with engineering leaders, from senior engineers leading without authority to directors leading through managers. An hour a week on the decision in front of you. You leave with your own answer and the words to make it land.
Former Director of Engineering at Yahoo. Working with engineering leaders since 2021.
What we work on
These come up a lot. You're the one who solves them. I bring the tools and the support, and this is roughly where we'd start.
- You're considering management.
- Management is a career change. Before you make it, we find out what you're after. Influence, comp, decision authority, and a way out of IC work are different goals, and the job has to match yours.
- You just absorbed a team.
- The org chart calls it internal. To the people arriving it feels like an acquisition, and I know because I was one of them first. We plan your first weeks with them, starting with the open questions you'll ask each engineer. What you hear decides what you fix first.
- Nobody in the room knows who decides.
- My first question is whether anyone has asked out loud. If nobody can answer, the decision belongs where the org chart converges. We work out how you take it there in the open, so that leader decides or names a decider.
- You're briefing an executive.
- We start from what the executive needs out of the conversation, then sort your material into what belongs in a document and what belongs in a working session. From there we work through your draft until the technical reality is intact and the tradeoff is visible.
- Your boss wants to hand you more than you can carry.
- You know these systems better than your boss does, so you write down everything the new scope contains and get the list confirmed. We work out the questions that follow, like how one team carries it, and your own answers before you ask. Asked without the list, the same question sounds like resistance.
- You have bad news to deliver.
- We script the conversation together, whether it's comp below expectations, a layoff or a firing. Open with "I've got bad news" so the tone matches from the first sentence. The feelings are valid and get acknowledged, and the decision still stands.
- Your engineers say AI doesn't work.
- Most of the time they're handing an agent a one-line ask and expecting it to just work. We find where that's happening on your team and plan how you bring pairing back for a while. The engineer who has it working drives first, then they trade seats. Old-school method on new-school problems.
- Something else.
- Promotion cases, review agents, or whatever is on your desk. If I'm the wrong person for it, I'll say so. me@jakeasmith.com →
Thinking through the tactics that will lead him to discover the solutions himself really speaks to me.
Where I've sat
In the seat
I spent nearly ten years at AOL and Yahoo. I started as a principal engineer, leading with no direct reports, then became a manager, then a manager of managers. I left in 2023 as a Director of Engineering with four managers reporting to me. Most of that org came to me through reorgs, and I held it together through two changes of ownership. I developed three engineers from inside it into first-time managers.
With clients
I've worked with leaders privately since 2021. Some earned promotions, and some secured promotions and pay adjustments for the people on their teams. I advise leaders on bringing AI into their teams, including inside large enterprises early in their adoption, and I build CardPath with coding agents every day.
Working together
I work best with people who care about their team and have no patience for corporate buzzword bingo.
One leader
1:1 sessions
An hour a week. Privately, or sponsored by your company.
One leadership team
Workshops and advisory
One problem the team has now, like a reorg or a stalled AI rollout. Remote or on-site.
What stays between us
Session content stays with you
If your company sponsors the work, your manager hears the goals and how we're tracking, with you in the room.
Pricing
We work it out together
In a first conversation. You know your budget, I know what the work takes.