Tony Piper coaches VPs of Engineering, Heads of Engineering, and engineering directors through the transition from technical expert to leader. With 27 years' experience making that same shift, his transformative approach helps engineering leaders find their natural style without adding frameworks. Outdoor coaching walks available in Canary Wharf, London.
You were promoted because you were brilliant at building things. Your code was clean. Your architecture was sound. People trusted your technical judgment.
Then one day you became VP of Engineering. Or Head of Engineering. Or Engineering Director. And suddenly the skills that got you here — the ability to solve technical problems, to optimise systems, to see elegant solutions — those skills don't actually help with the thing you're now supposed to be doing.
You're not an engineer anymore. But inside, you still think like one. And there's a voice that keeps saying: 'Shouldn't I be writing code right now?'
The Mask You Wear (Now That You're a Leader)
As an engineering leader, you're wearing at least two masks. Maybe three.
First: you're managing people who used to be your peers. The engineering manager who sat next to you last year is now reporting to you. How do you give feedback to someone you used to debate architecture with? How do you make decisions that affect their career without feeling like you're playing at authority?
Second: you're expected to think strategically when your instinct is to solve problems. Your instinct is to jump in, to debug, to optimise. But your job now is to step back. To let others solve it. To think about the engineering org six months out, a year out. That feels passive. It feels wrong.
Third: you're performing 'leader' when the person inside still feels like an engineer. You're managing your emotions, monitoring your facial expressions, explaining decisions in a certain tone, appearing calm when you'd rather be in a debugging session. That performance exhausts you.
And if you're neurodivergent — if you have ADHD, autism, dyslexia — you're wearing a fourth mask on top of all this. Performing neurotypical. Performing leader. Performing calm. Performing like you have all the answers.
No wonder you're tired.
The Transition I Made (And Why I Get It)
I've been where you are. I started as a developer. Became a tech lead. Became an engineering manager. Eventually, IT Director. I made every transition you're making.
I know the moment when you realise that the skills that got you here won't get you there. I know what it feels like to give feedback to a peer. To make a decision that's strategically right but feels wrong in your gut. To sit in a meeting and have to perform calm while part of you wants to be writing code.
I've lived through the identity crisis of not being an engineer anymore. And through the guilt of it. And through the slow realisation that there's a different kind of leadership that emerges when you stop trying to be what you think a leader should be.
My Approach (What's Different)
Most leadership coaching adds more frameworks. More models. More accountability systems. More things to optimise.
Your problem isn't that you need more frameworks. Your problem is that your mind is already full. Full of technical debt you could fix. Full of code reviews you should be doing. Full of the sense that you should still be hands-on. Full of the mask you're wearing.
What I do is the opposite. We don't add. We subtract. We remove the performance. We remove the shoulds. We remove the layers of expectation that are keeping you from leading naturally.
Here's what that looks like: we work together to understand what your natural leadership style actually is. Not what a leader should be. What you actually are when the masks come off.
For many neurodivergent engineering leaders I work with — that's when things shift. Because your natural style often includes the very things you've been hiding: directness, rapid processing, pattern recognition, the ability to focus intensely. Those aren't bugs in your leadership. They're features. You've just been masking them.
How We Work
This is one-to-one coaching. Your situation is specific. A group programme won't cut it.
We typically work over 8-12 weeks. Sessions are online, or if you're in London, we can walk together. Walking changes the conversation. You're moving, thinking, no eye contact pressure. Things come up differently.
We start with a free 45-minute Introductory Call. No obligation. Just a chance to see if this is the right fit and what the actual thing is that we'd be working on together.
Coaching Walks in Canary Wharf
If you're based in London, I offer coaching walks in Canary Wharf. There's something about moving outside that creates better thinking and conversation.