Map for Engineers Podcast

Dario from Amp and I sit together to explore what comes after the "coding agent" era — verifiability as the new bottleneck, rethinking the testing pyramid, persistent dev environments in the cloud, stateful actors, single-tenant deployments, and the future of product interfaces in a world of agents.If you are building serious production-grade software with agents and trying to make sense of where engineering is heading, this is the podcast you might want to listen to.Chapters:00:00 Introduction03:39 "The Coding Agent is Dead": AMP's Vision09:45 Instant Inference & Verifiability as the New Bottleneck16:22 Rethinking the Testing Pyramid for Agents25:02 TDD Renaissance & Parse, Don't Validate Principle35:43 What Agents Need: Sandboxes & Permissions41:50 Dev Laptops in the Cloud: Tailscale, Fly Sprites, Exe.dev46:54 Stateful Actors, Durable Objects & Erlang's Legacy53:36 Monorepo vs Microservices & Single-Tenant Deployments1:05:55 Build vs Buy: Copying Software & Interface Design1:16:41 Bun vs Nodejs, Personal AI Agents & The Future of Interfaces1:32:04 CLI vs MCP, Engineering Skills & the End of Coding as a BottleneckAs always, thanks for listening to MapForEngineers! Sincerely your host, Vitalii Lakusta

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

With AI, great product engineering is relevant more than ever. Anton Keks and I sit together again to explore the real question: what does it mean to be an engineer now, in today's AI world?In this round 2 conversation, we talk about the shift from coding to thinking — from generating output to making decisions. Because AI doesn’t remove the need for engineering fundamentals; it amplifies the cost of not having them.We cover what AI engineering actually looks like in practice: how to use these tools without losing control, how to avoid shallow understanding, and why system design, feedback loops, and clean abstractions matter more than ever.We delved deep into discussing pair and pair-programming practices in the age of AI, and how engineers can collaborate with each other to avoid knowledge silos. We also get into the operational side — CI/CD, security, engineering workflows, and building systems that scale and survive.If you’re leading teams or writing production code in 2026, this is the podcast you might be interested to listen to. 00:00 Intro & What This “Round 2” Is About00:10:55 Blind Execution vs Real Understanding in Engineering00:21:50 Why Core Engineering Skills Never Go Away00:32:45 Avoiding Knowledge Silos in Teams00:43:40 Team Culture, Demos & Feedback Loops00:54:35 Reducing Boilerplate & Writing Cleaner Code01:05:30 Productivity Tradeoffs & Time Optimization01:16:25 Using AI Effectively as an Engineer01:27:20 CI/CD, Automation & Developer Workflows01:38:15 Security, Vulnerabilities & Real Risks01:49:10 Building Systems That Last for Years02:00:05 Scaling Systems & Working with SubdomainsThanks for listening. Feel free to subscribe on YouTube or on MapForEngineers.com substack. See you next time.

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

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

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

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/

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

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

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

Lauri Koobas, ex-Microsoft and currently Head of Data Platform at Bondora, shed insights on data engineering - from early startup to scaling.

We mostly focused on analytics and building data warehouse - real-world challenges from both data engineering and software engineering sides. We also discussed GDPR and PII challenges when dealing with data.

You can find video version on MapForEngineers YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mapforengineers

Annotated chapters in timeline:

00:00:00 Sneak peek of episode

00:01:21 Episode overview

00:02:44 Introduction, Lauri's background

00:20:48 Starship robots: huge amount of data there

00:23:37 Data lake, data warehouse, data lakehouse

00:26:44 Devil is in the details: timestamps, texts, character sets...

00:49:44 Moving data from prod to data warehouse

00:53:09 Analytics tools: PostHog, Amplitude, Redash, Databricks

01:00:15 Analytics tools vs real-time monitoring like Prometheus/Grafana

01:04:15 Usability matters: each tool for its job

01:06:38 Startup grows: needs in data analytics

01:11:09 Multiple data sources: when data warehouse really begins

01:19:55 Data and (de-)coupling: software engineers should not be blocked by analytics

01:22:51 Data ETL

01:24:59 Changes in data model: multi-phase migrations

01:29:38 Change data capture, incremental imports

01:34:21 Should analytics have new data in real time? Maybe not?

01:39:02 Importing data into DWH through business events

01:43:37 When DWH subscribes to business events, data model can evolve freely

01:47:16 Quick recap what we discussed so far

01:52:25 GDPR and Data Compliance: start early

01:56:05 PII data: know exactly where you store it, control it well

02:03:37 Lauri's books recommendations on data engineering - Kimball

02:07:18 Lauri's podcast on data engineering, in Estonian

02:08:28 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

Carl, staff software engineer at Pactum, shed light on some of the latest AI tools in software development. We discussed v0.dev, continue.dev, ollama, and much more! It was an episode with a lot of useful information and insights! To check all content on Map For Engineers including blog posts, feel free to subscribe on https://MapForEngineers.com

Annotated chapters in timeline on topics that Carl and I covered:

00:00:00 - Start

00:04:05 - Small talk, getting into the groove

00:08:18 - Carl's background: ex-Pipedrive, now engineer in Pactum

00:19:44 - Early tools: simple autocomplete and simple prompting without context

00:27:11 - AI tools with context: Cursor IDE, Continue.dev

00:43:35 - Cursor IDE Composer - Prompt+Apply to Code Instantly

00:47:29 - Ollama - following docker philosophy

00:55:15 - V0.dev - LLM to create frontend components

00:59:27 - Cursor IDE + v0.dev combination as a workflow

01:02:23 - Claude 3.5 Sonnet

01:03:10 - OpenAI o1

01:04:56 - LLMs vs SQL Queries - still to be solved

01:08:17 - LLM in TDD and Testing Workflows

01:16:04 - Focus on engineering fundamentals - LLM does not replace your engineering fundamental knowledge

01:20:13 - Book recommendations

01:29:09 - Hosting models yourself - expensive

01:33:27 - Fine-tuning models

01:35:33 - RAG

01:49:50 - Chain of thought

01:51:46 - vyce.app - GenAI helping with compliance questions

01:54:25 - Summary of tools we covered so far

01:58:43 - GenAI vs engineering careers

02:05:39 - Wrap up with Carl

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

I had a pleasure to chat with my friend Joel Mislav Kunst, who is Engineering Manager at Microsoft. We talked about growth in engineering. Some of the topics that we touched upon, with timeline timestamps are:

00:00:00 - Glimpse of episode

00:01:16 - Quick episode overview

00:05:18 - Joel's journey in software engineering

00:14:55 - Focus on engineering fundamentals

00:23:34 - Learning from all hard experiences: solving root causes

00:31:05 - Relationship between engineer and their manager

00:53:03 - Manager is not your punching bag for complaining: propose initiatives instead, be active

01:10:55 - Engineer vs manager: fork in career

01:29:17 - Generative AI in context of engineering career/growth

01:36:01 - Teaching is essential for growth. Seniors teaching juniors. Knowlede sharing

01:43:14 - Wrap up

To get notified of new episodes and blog posts, subscribe at MapForEngineers.com

For Youtube video version of the episode, check https://www.youtube.com/@mapforengineers

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