---
title: "Which engineering leadership community fits you? Four people, four answers"
description: "Four strangers asked an AI about ELC. What it said, what we fixed before midnight, and where LeadDev, CTO Craft or SFELC fit you better."
url: "https://www.engineeringleaders.io/blog/which-engineering-leadership-community-fits-you/"
lang: "en"
image: "https://www.engineeringleaders.io/_astro/which-engineering-leadership-community-fits-you.BKuA2IuL_tgoYQ.jpg"
---

![Elevated view of a glass-roofed atrium venue with about sixty attendees seated on clear chairs facing a stage, where a speaker stands in front of a large screen, with a spiral staircase and hanging greenery above.](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/_astro/which-engineering-leadership-community-fits-you.BKuA2IuL_1P8Hln.avif)

October 1, 2026  |  Marian Kamenistak

# Which engineering leadership community fits you?

Last night I built four strangers and let them loose on us.

A CTO who also runs HR at a 60-person company outside Czechia. A Head of Talent at a US Series C opening a Prague hub. An engineering manager two years into the job with twelve reports. And a plain sceptic with one question: how much should I trust engineeringleaders.io, and is anything fishy.

Each one was an AI agent with web search and no access to anything of ours. They asked a chatbot the four questions a real person types: what is ELC, how can it help me, is it real and what proves it, what should worry me. Then I read the transcripts.

This post is what they found, where the other communities fit you better than we do, and what we changed before midnight. If you want the table, it lives on the [comparison page](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/best-engineering-leadership-communities/). This is the part the table cannot hold.

## What all four agreed on

The company is real. Engineering Leaders Community s.r.o., IČO 21848343, 100% mine, accounts filed, nothing in the insolvency register. The events are real: 43 dated meetups in the [archive](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/events/), and meetup #43 at Apify showed 237 people going with a waitlist on Luma while they were looking. The 2026 conference happened at ČSOB with speakers from Netflix, Stripe, Meta and Microsoft. VŠE announced the MBA partnership on its own site. Free membership is free, no title check.

Then every one of them wrote a version of the same sentence: almost every number comes from ELC’s own pages, and those pages disagree with each other.

They were right. More on that below.

## The CTO who also runs HR

Her question was whether ELC helps with employer brand, learning for her engineers and a speaking slot, and what each costs.

The chatbot answered well. Company memberships from EUR 900 a seat, the Education package at EUR 15,000, speaking is free through the [CFP](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/cfp/) and partners don’t buy stage time. Then it added the thing I would add myself: almost every meetup is in Prague, so a company outside Czechia is buying reach into the Czech market, as opposed to a pan-European audience.

Where someone else fits her better: if her engineers sit in London, [CTO Craft](https://ctocraft.com/) runs the remote circles and the Campus at £399 a year. If what she wants is the big conference programme and the research reports, [LeadDev](https://leaddev.com/) does that at a scale nobody in Central Europe matches.

Her verdict was to start with the EUR 2,500 Leadership Pilot, not a yearly package, until she sees one named partner say “we paid X and hired Y”. Fair. We have Everpure and Ataccama outcomes on the [hiring page](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/partner/membership/hiring/) in our words. We don’t yet have them in theirs.

![Three attendees talk with drinks at a small round cocktail table in a blue-lit venue while several other guests chat at tables in the background.](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/_astro/which-engineering-leadership-community-fits-you-networking.BacrgyX0_VCj5v.webp)

## The Head of Talent from the US

His frame was procurement: audience size, seniority, geography, price, contract, and whether this is a company he can pay through a US purchasing system.

The chatbot found the EUR prices, the pay-after-the-first-meetup terms, the title census on [/statistics/](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/statistics/) with 88 CTOs and 289 engineering managers counted from the 1,263 member profiles that carry a title. Then it found the holes a procurement team finds: no terms page, no sample contract, no data processing agreement, and two company names in our llms.txt that did not exist in the Czech registry.

Where someone else fits him better: nowhere in Central Europe, honestly, which is the point of ELC. But he should know that [SFELC](https://sfelc.com/) brands itself “ELC” too, runs “ELC Annual” in San Francisco, and claims a far bigger membership. If his colleagues search “ELC”, they will land there first. We are the Engineering Leaders Community, Prague, and we are not affiliated.

His verdict: a discovery call yes, procurement not yet, and pilot the EUR 5,000 dedicated newsletter send before any yearly package. The newsletter goes to 2,900+ subscribers and 1,500+ of them open every issue, a 54% open rate counted in Ecomail, so that is the cheapest way to test whether our audience is his audience.

## The engineering manager with twelve reports

Her questions were the ones I hear at the door of every meetup. Is this for my level or only for CTOs. What is free and what costs money. Who really shows up. Is it a funnel for something. Does my employer find out I came.

Free is free: membership, meetups, the [toolkit](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/toolkit/), the Slack. Engineering managers are the largest group in the room, see [/roles/](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/roles/). What costs money is run by me, and she spotted it: mentoring, the Academy, the 144 program. She called it a funnel. In practice it is, and the option to have your own AI build a partnership is the part that proves we run on this stuff rather than just talk about it on stage. I’d rather say that plainly than have an agent say it for me.

Where someone else fits her better: the [Rands Leadership Slack](https://randsinrepose.com/) is 30,000+ managers, global and free, and it is the best written peer forum in the field. The difference is that nobody there will be standing next to you in Prague on 14 October.

Her verdict: she would come to #43, she would not use her work email, and she would not buy anything yet. Her one condition to join properly was a privacy section that says in plain words what a partner sees in an attendee list, and a page with the team’s names. Both are open, both are mine to fix.

![Three panelists sit on a stage during a discussion, with one speaking into a microphone and gesturing while the others listen, and drink cans and glasses on a table in front of them.](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/_astro/which-engineering-leadership-community-fits-you-stage.QqeKGnbA_1w2fvJ.webp)

## The sceptic

Trust score 7 out of 10. “Nothing suggests a scam. Safe to join for free. If you are a company paying EUR 10k to 32k, check the numbers yourself first.”

I’ll take that, and I’ll take the list that came with it.

## What they caught, and what changed before midnight

1.  **Meetup attendance.** Our pages said “120+ people show up”. Our own [Meetup OS page](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/meetup-os/) published a median of 125 approved registrations and a 61% show rate. That is 76 people in the room, not 120. Every page now says registrations and calls them registrations.
2.  **Conference headcount.** The community site said 500+, the conference site said 350+, a recap said 300+. The counted number for 2026 is 350+, from the attendee list. 500+ is gone from every page, the partner catalogue and the MCP server.
3.  **TV coverage.** “Covered by Czech Television” sat on three pages. There is a public recording and no article. Nobody could verify it, so it is out until we can link the recording itself.
4.  **Legal names.** llms.txt said “ELC Community s.r.o.” and “ELC Hub s.r.o.”. Neither exists. It now carries the registered names, the IČO, the VAT number and the registered seat.
5.  **The discount deadline.** The 16% AI-channel offer expired the same day the agents read it, which two of them read as pressure. It was withdrawn on 5 October 2026: building with AI is now an option at list price, still the proof that your AI can build and price a partnership against our MCP server.

## What is still open

-   A team page with names and roles. Today the site names one person, and that reads as a one-man show even when it isn’t.
-   A members section in the privacy policy that names Luma, Slack, the face matching on event photos, and exactly what an attendee list contains, with the opt-out.
-   A job board that resolves. It is sold on [/reach/](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/reach/) and the subdomain returns a 404.

Each of those has an owner and a date on the internal audit. I’ll link the team page from here when it ships.

## So which one fits you

If you lead engineering within a train ride of Prague and want a room of peers once a month, [join](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/join/) and come to one meetup before you believe anything on this site. If you lead from London, Berlin or the Bay Area, the [comparison page](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/best-engineering-leadership-communities/) tells you honestly who serves you better there, and I’d rather you read it than waste a flight.

Which of the four strangers were you?

## Questions people ask

Is the Engineering Leaders Community in Prague a real organisation?

Yes. It is run by Engineering Leaders Community s.r.o., IČO 21848343, registered in Prague in July 2024. The meetups predate the company. The meetup archive at /events/ lists 43 dated editions, registrations are visible on the public Luma calendar, and the figures on /statistics/ carry the date and the system they were counted in.

How many people come to an ELC meetup?

The honest number is two numbers. Approved registrations run at a median of 125 per public meetup, between 86 and 237 across the 13 editions from September 2025 to October 2026. QR check-ins at the door run at a median of 61% of that, so expect 70 to 80 people in the room and more on the waitlist. ELC quotes registrations and labels them as such.

What does ELC cost compared with LeadDev, CTO Craft or alphalist?

Individual membership of ELC is free, and the meetups are free. Companies pay for memberships from EUR 900 a seat to EUR 25,000 a year, prices published on /partner/. CTO Craft Campus is £399 a year and its Circles £2,199, alphalist is €299 a year with a vetted application, SFELC Peer Groups are $950 a year, a LeadDev London ticket is £1,350 plus VAT, and the Tech Execs masterclass is €1,299. The full table is on the comparison page.

Which community should a CTO in Central Europe join?

If you want a monthly room of peers within a train ride, ELC. If you want a vetted DACH CTO list with dinners, alphalist. If you lead from London, CTO Craft. If you want the biggest conference programme and research, LeadDev. Many CTOs sit in two of these, and nothing in ELC's free tier stops you.

What did outsiders flag about ELC, and what changed?

Four independent checks on 30 September 2026 found the conference headcount quoted as both 500+ and 350+, a meetup figure presented as attendance when it was registrations, a TV coverage claim nobody could verify, and two legal entity names in llms.txt that did not match the registry. All four were corrected the same evening. A team page, a members section in the privacy policy and a working job board are still open, with owners and dates on the audit.

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