About the Leadership Garden

Hi, I’m Csaba Okrona. I’m a software engineering leader who has been working in leadership roles since 2011, mostly around engineering management, org design, delivery, and helping teams grow without burning people out.

I’ve spent almost 6 years at Prezi, then time at Contentful, Choco, and Personio, and now I’m at EGYM. Across those years, the through-line has been the same: building healthier engineering teams, helping leaders get sharper at the human side of the job, and making delivery systems work without turning management into theater.

I care a lot about the operating system around engineering work: one-on-ones, feedback, accountability, trust, prioritization, team dynamics, and the messy organizational realities that never show up in the idealized version of the craft.

Who This Site Is For

Leadership Garden is written for:

• engineering managers, directors, VPs, and CTOs
• tech leads
• senior ICs who want better leadership judgment and organizational awareness

If you’re trying to become a better manager, lead a team without brute force, or make sense of how engineering work changes under pressure, you’re in the right place.

What Leadership Garden Is Trying To Do

Engineering leadership, and especially engineering management, often gets a bad reputation. A lot of the criticism is deserved. Too much advice in this space is vague, performative, or disconnected from how real teams actually work.

This site exists to push in the other direction.

I want to show that leadership can be people-first, humane, and still rigorous. That management can be a real enabling function. That clarity, directness, structure, and kindness are not in conflict. And that better leadership is often less about charisma and more about judgment, systems, and repeated small choices.

What You’ll Find Here

• practical guides for one-on-ones, feedback, conflict, onboarding, retrospectives, and delivery
• mental models for leadership, management, and organizational decision-making
• templates and reusable tools when a post can be more useful than pure commentary
• essays about engineering craft, career growth, and how AI is changing the work

Connect With Me

• Subscribe to my newsletter
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow my work on GitHub
• Email me: hello AT leadership DOT garden

If you’re new here, Start Here is the fastest way in. If you already know what area you’re after, Topics is the better browse path.