Becoming a Product Engineer: First Steps
From NO SILVER BULLET by Three Dots Labs
November 26, 2025 · 1h 6m · Season 2 · Episode 1
About this episode
The episode discusses the differences between software projects in regular jobs and side projects, and techniques to improve collaboration between developers and product managers.
In this episode, we talk about why software projects in regular jobs are delivered much slower compared to side projects, and what you can do about it. We share our journey from building hobby projects as teenagers to working in professional environments, and the differences we encountered. Developers are often kept isolated from product decisions and treated as “coding monkeys in golden cages” - just receiving tasks without understanding the why behind them. We discuss techniques like Event Storming that can help break down these barriers, and improve collaboration between developers and product managers.
Topics covered
- software development
- product engineering
- collaboration
- Event Storming
Keywords
- coding monkeys
- product decisions
- hobby projects
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