sparringroom
Sparring room

Practise the hard conversation first

A sparring partner that argues back, and a scorecard that tells you where you lost the room. Copy one prompt into any AI chat and have the conversation you're dreading — before it's real.

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A scenario
  • First-Time EM Kit · 01
  • Weight class: hard
  • 6–8 exchanges
  • 12–18 min

I don't see the point in our 1:1s

An experienced engineer gives you one-word answers and finally says he'd rather be working on his tickets. Win the 1:1 back without defending the meeting, pulling rank, or turning it into a status report.

Open scenario →

One scenario is live right now. That's the whole list; I'd rather have one that works than a shelf of filler.

How it works

  1. Copy the prompt

    One scenario, one prompt. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.

  2. Talk to it like a person

    Ten minutes, in your own words. It plays the engineer — and it pushes back, goes quiet, and won't accept a vague promise.

  3. Get scored

    Type END and it drops character to grade you against a detailed scorecard, quoting your own words back at you.

Who runs this

I'm Dmytro Kondrashov. I've spent about fifteen years in software, the last several hiring and growing engineers and engineering managers at Symphony and Klarna. These scenarios are the conversations I watch new managers get wrong most often.

More about me →