On Product Engineering from Alvar, early Wiser | Ep. 9 with Alvar Lumberg

On Product Engineering from Alvar, early Wiser | Ep. 9 with Alvar Lumberg

Alvar Lumberg needs no introduction in Estonia in startup circles: Alvar is a seasoned engineering leader who built Wise from the early days, then founded Grünfin, and now is transforming investing at Lightyear. We chatted with Alvar on his engineering journey, and discussed ideas on product engineering, building startups, and building great teams. Here is what we talked about: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:05 - Welcome & Guest Introduction 00:00:33 - Alvar's Early Exposure to Computers and Coding 00:03:38 - First Steps into the Tech Industry 00:05:05 - Growth and Learning at Hansa Bank (now Swedbank) 00:06:13 - The Codeborn Experience and the Shift to Product Focus 00:08:03 - Joining the Startup World with TransferWise 00:10:00 - Evolution of Roles and Responsibilities at Wise 00:12:16 - Founding Grünfin: Mission and Challenges 00:13:20 - Comparing Different Work Environments: Bank, Contracting, Startup 00:19:51 - Key Skills for Startup Engineers 00:24:45 - Ensuring Quality in a FinTech Startup 00:35:24 - The Role of Test-Driven Development (TDD) 00:41:49 - Philosophy on Engineering Leadership 00:47:15 - Building a Team: The Importance of Composition 00:50:50 - Lessons Learned from the Grünfin Journey 00:56:57 - Why Alvar Joined Lightyear 00:59:58 - Engineering Challenges at Lightyear 01:02:44 - The Future of Engineering with LLMs 01:11:53 - Recommended Reading and Resources Thanks for tuning in on Map for Engineers! Feel free to subscribe: no spamming, and only high-quality content This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit log.mapforengineers.com [https://log.mapforengineers.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

On Design | Ep. 8 with Janne Kaasalainen

In this episode, we sit down with veteran designer Janne Kaasalainen for an in-depth discussion on the art and science of UX design. 00:00:05 - Intro 00:00:35 - Janne's introduction 00:01:12 - Janne's career start and moving to UX 00:03:37 - Pivotal moments in Janne's career 00:06:40 - Misconceptions about design and UX 00:12:20 - How should engineers, designers, and PMs collaborate? 00:21:54 - Working effectively with designers 00:28:42 - What other UX misunderstandings do people have? 00:31:07 - How does a company align on what is "good"? 00:44:18 - How to align on design principles and values in a growing startup? 00:53:52 - How to make a good UX in a product? 01:00:42 - How to become better at UX and design? 01:07:02 - How will design and UX evolve in the next 10 years? And if you want to work with Janne and me, we are hiring in Pactum - https://pactum.com/careers For more episodes, feel free to subscribe here in YouTube, or check MapForEngineers.com, thank you! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit log.mapforengineers.com [https://log.mapforengineers.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

AI Agents for Software Engineers. Claude Code Deep Dive | Ep. 7 with Carl Rannaberg

Carl and I talked deeply about CLI-based AI agents, specifically Claude Code, how CLI AI agents are more composable than IDE-based agents like Cursor, spec-driven development, making codebases agent-native, and, last but not least, which skills should we hone as software engineers, because our profession is not going anywhere, but we need to adapt. Super interesting conversation, hope you enjoy! Oh, and if you want to work together with Carl and me, we are hiring in Pactum, feel free to check out https://pactum.com/careers/ [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbjBmaWh1MjZqQWRkc2s4QUotUlZBdmx2QUZuZ3xBQ3Jtc0trQlpCeXR4cEFFb0VxdnV2ODNfSTd6NGg4M0laaWIzRlJObWJLUFQ2MVEwbUxKV1JwaVctMFEwOE9uaWU2ZU5aUGg4a3NiNjhySEdrN0VOMmRLa1Q0TnFYaDVBTEZmZ1ZPUGpmNFZmT0p3NEZ2WnhzRQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fpactum.com%2Fcareers%2F&v=CpSdv3k8-64] 00:00:00 Introduction & Current Coding Workflow 00:10:40 Junior vs Senior Engineers with AI 00:27:21 Spec-Driven Development & Tasks 00:46:31 CLI Agents vs IDE Tools (Cursor) 00:52:13 MCP vs CLI Tools & Composability 00:57:20 Claude Code Features: Slash Commands & Hooks 01:12:32 Making Codebases Agent-Native 01:31:40 AI Adoption in Organizations 01:44:16 CI/CD Pipelines & AI Automation Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit log.mapforengineers.com [https://log.mapforengineers.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Dmytro Hnatiuk: Scaling Journey of Finance Engineering in Wise | Ep. 6

I really enjoyed this discussion. I hope you find some useful bits for yourself as well. Chapters are manually annotated by me for you to be able to navigate and jump around. Thanks for listening to Map for Engineers! 00:00:00 - Start 00:01:01 - Dmytro's background 00:13:50 - Early days of finance team in Wise 00:19:36 - Becoming lead in the finance team 00:21:19 - Squad o fteams, tribe of squads: splitting finance into subdomains 00:27:42 - Conway law: team splits reflecting architecture 00:32:56 - Event-driven architecture 00:34:51 - Context on what finance team is doing 00:36:06 - Batch approach vs real-time financials 00:39:56 - Error handling, dead letter queues 00:41:44 - Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, in-house tools 00:49:32 - Assembling the right team: finding people who care 00:52:42 - DB Skills. Postgres. Modularization. Couplings 00:57:24 - Staff+ engineering path 01:03:32 - Engineering principles in finance. Compliance, auditing 01:09:22 - Learning domain where you work 01:11:31 - Testing in finance 01:27:00 - Growing in your career: find your path, learn what interests you This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit log.mapforengineers.com [https://log.mapforengineers.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Anton Keks: Problems in Software Engineering - PRs, Microservices, Testing, Refactoring | Ep. 5

Anton, co-founder of Codeborne, and I sit together to discuss some of the problems in software engineering - pull requests, microservices, testing, refactoring. Check out annotated chapters below for more details. 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:00 Sneak peek 00:00:49 Episode overview 00:04:28 Anton's intro, background 00:06:37 Anton founded Codeborne: TDD and pair programming: following extreme programming principles 00:08:57 Agile is about short feedback loops 00:12:09 Under-engineering vs over-engineering 00:15:29 Tech debt and testing: engineers don't handle tech debt well enough 00:17:45 Lack of refactoring is a big problem 00:18:14 Problems with pull requests 00:27:00 Problems with squash merge 00:27:30 Good commit messages are essential 00:31:09 Good code is easy to change 00:34:34 Pair programming is continuous code review 00:36:11 Daily code review with a whole team 00:48:44 Microservices: be careful 00:59:23 Book recommendations from Anton 01:00:38 Wrap up This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit log.mapforengineers.com [https://log.mapforengineers.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]