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brainiac/studio

Digital Studio

brainiac/studiobrainiac/studio
← CTO as a Service
04 · cto as a service / team coaching

Make the team you already have twice as effective.

For leaders whose developers are talented but stuck. We work alongside your team for a few months — reviewing real code, fixing how work flows, coaching your leads — until shipping quickly is simply how things are done here. From $4k a month.

See our work
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our point of view

You probably don’t need more developers. You need fewer things standing in their way.

When a team feels slow, the instinct is to hire. But most teams we meet are held up by things that cost nothing to fix: work that arrives half-defined, code reviews that sit unread for three days, releases everyone quietly dreads, and a lead who was promoted for being a brilliant engineer and then given no help learning to lead.

We coach inside the real work — your code, your sprints, your releases — never in a training room. Nobody remembers a workshop. People remember the week their work started getting reviewed the same day, and the release that took eleven minutes instead of an entire nervous afternoon.

3 monthsTypical program before we start stepping back
2–3×More releases per month by the end of it
0Slide decks — we coach inside the real work
what we build

What the coaching covers.

01

Code review that actually helps

We join your reviews and change the standard: same-day feedback, comments that teach something, and a written definition of what “ready to merge” means. In most teams this is the single fastest improvement available.

02

Faster, calmer releases

We work with your team until releasing is boring: automatic checks, a one-click undo, and small changes going out often instead of one large monthly event nobody sleeps through.

03

Testing people actually maintain

Not a coverage target nobody believes in. We help your team write the tests that catch the bugs you keep having, and delete the ones that only slow everybody down.

04

Turning ideas into clear work

Half of all rework starts with a vague ticket. We coach your product and engineering people to write work that can be picked up and finished without three rounds of guessing.

05

Growing your team leads

Weekly one-to-ones with your engineering leads on the things nobody teaches them: giving hard feedback kindly, planning realistically, and protecting the team’s focus from everyone else.

06

Hiring and career levels

Interview questions that predict real performance, scorecards, and a clear ladder so people know what growth looks like. We sit on panels while your team picks up the technique.

07

Knowledge out of people’s heads

We find the parts only one person understands, then get them written down, paired on and shared — before that person takes a long holiday, or a better offer.

use cases

Who this is for.

01

A team that has quietly slowed down

More people than last year, less shipped. We find where the time actually goes and fix the largest leaks first, in that order.

02

A first-time engineering lead

Your best engineer now runs the team and is quietly drowning. We coach them weekly until the role fits, instead of waiting to see if they survive it.

03

A team that just grew fast

Ten engineers where there were four. The habits that worked at four are now the bottleneck. We help you build routines that hold at the new size.

04

After an audit or a bad incident

Something went wrong and everyone agrees things must change. We make sure the change survives past the third week, when the urgency fades.

approach

How a program runs.

01

Watch first

Two weeks with no advice whatsoever. We sit in your meetings, read your code reviews, and watch a release go out. Most problems are perfectly visible to anyone actually looking.

02

Show the numbers

How long work waits, how long reviews take, how often releases fail, how much gets redone. Nobody argues with their own numbers, which is why we start there.

03

Pick three things

We agree the three changes that will make the biggest difference this quarter. Not twelve. Teams change three habits at a time, at most, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone’s money.

04

Work alongside

Weekly sessions plus hands-on time in the real work: pairing, reviewing, joining planning. We live in your chat tool, not behind an email address.

05

Coach the leads

One-to-one time with your engineering leads every week, so every improvement has an owner inside your company long after we’ve gone.

06

Hand it over

By the final month your team runs the routines and we mostly listen. We finish with a written playbook and a standing invitation to call when something new comes up.

tech stack

What we work in.

React
Next.js
Node.js
Laravel
PHP
React Native
GitHub & GitLab
Linear & Jira
Slack & Notion
pricing

Engagement models.

— 01

Lead Coaching

from $4k / mo

Weekly one-to-one coaching for your engineering lead or CTO, plus a monthly session with the wider team. Quiet, and unreasonably high leverage.

  • Weekly 1:1 with your lead
  • Monthly session with the team
  • Message access between calls
  • 3-month minimum
Most popular— 02

Team Program

from $9k / mo

Our standard engagement. A senior engineer inside your team two days a week: reviewing, pairing, and fixing how work actually flows.

  • Two days a week, embedded
  • Code review and pairing
  • Release and testing overhaul
  • 3-month minimum
— 03

Transformation

from $16k / mo

For larger groups or several teams at once. Two coaches, leadership coaching, hiring support, and quarterly progress reporting to your board.

  • Two senior coaches
  • Several teams covered
  • Hiring and career-level support
  • 6-month minimum
faq

Frequently asked.

5 questions answered. Still have one? Reach out.

Only if you announce it badly, and we’ll help you announce it well. We arrive as extra senior help, not as auditors. In practice engineers enjoy it: most of what we fix had been annoying them long before we showed up.

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