The Product Engineers Podcast

Meikel Ratz is a product engineer at PostHog, where he leads the messaging team. In this episode, we unpack the product thinking behind that role and what it takes to become a product-minded engineer: understanding customers, making product decisions, thinking about revenue, and deciding what to build instead of simply working through tickets.
In this conversation, we explore what happens to software engineering when writing code is no longer the scarce skill. Meikel shares how product engineers work at PostHog, why “snacking work” can consume your day without moving the needle, how engineers can develop business sense, and why data, customer context, and sometimes gut feeling should drive what you build.
In our conversation, we discuss:
1. Why solving problems, not writing code, has always been the real job of software engineers
2. “Snacking work”: the small, satisfying tasks that consume time without creating much impact
3. How PostHog gives engineers ownership over customers, product decisions, reliability, and revenue
4. How engineers can develop product and business sense, even if they’ve spent their career being handed tickets
5. Why data should drive product decisions, when gut feeling is still useful, and how AI changes the economics of experimentation
Episode transcript: https://productengineers.com/episodes/season2/why-just-coding-isnt-enough-anymore/
Where to find Meikel Ratz:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meikelratz/
Where to find Peppe:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peppesilletti/
• X: https://x.com/peppesilletti
• Website: https://peppesilletti.io
Where to find The Product Engineers Podcast:
• Website: https://productengineers.com
In this episode, we cover:
(01:29) What is the role of a software engineer in the AI era?
(07:09) Snacking work, hard problems, and engineering impact
(14:01) Product engineers, product managers, and company culture
(23:21) What it means to be a product-minded engineer
(29:31) How to develop business and product sense
(34:13) Start with users, then business, pricing, and product vision
(39:03) How PostHog uses data to make product decisions
(43:02) Data, gut feeling, and experimenting cheaply with AI
(44:50) What to do when engineers are just handed tickets
(48:53) Where to find Meikel
Referenced:
• PostHog: https://posthog.com

If you're freelancing as a software engineer, you've probably noticed something a bit weird: your freelance pricing is now working against you. The faster you go, the less you bill. This episode is a conversation with Judith Bohlert — a freelance softw...

If you're freelancing as a software engineer, you've probably noticed something a bit weird: your freelance pricing is now working against you. The faster you go, the less you bill.
This episode is a conversation with Judith Bohlert — a freelance software engineer based in Germany, self-employed for 3 years, building greenfield MVPs and prototypes for early-stage startups — about how freelancing with AI tools affects the job, pricing, and the identity of an independent engineer.
We get into the case for moving from time-seller to product engineer-consultant, why a productized service or a value-based offer is now the obvious response to AI freelancing economics, and why your personal brand — not your stack — is the only moat left when average code becomes a commodity.
TIMESTAMP
0:00 — How AI changed a Monday morning for a freelance dev
4:15 — Tools that actually work: Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot
5:41 — Repricing your work: hourly vs fixed vs productized vs value-based
17:46 — Use AI to work less, not more: the case for the four-day week
22:04 — Personal brand as the only moat when code is a commodity
35:00 — The freelancer label is dying, the consultant role is rising
38:54 — Advice if you want to start freelancing now
GUEST
Judith Bohlert is a freelance software engineer based in Germany, with around 3 years of self-employment experience, focused on greenfield MVPs and prototypes for early-stage startups. She writes the low noise newsletter — a calmer take on working in tech, without hustle culture or the productivity-hack treadmill.
Website:https://www.judithboehlert.com/
Newsletter (low noise newsletter):https://www.lownoiseclub.com/
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jboehlert/
CONNECT WITH PRODUCT ENGINEERS
Host: Peppe Silletti
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/peppesilletti/
Peppe's website:https://peppesilletti.io
Product Engineers Community:https://discord.gg/4sMtRNSgU4
Share this episode with a freelance developer friend who's billing hourly and starting to feel it.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
podcast.productengineers.com

If you’re a product engineer, engineering manager or PM, we all know how it goes: you go through tons of meetings every day, and only when they end is when real work starts. PRDs, tickets, specs, follow-ups — all the artefact work nobody sees you do. And by the time you’re done, the next meeting is already starting.
One of today’s guests has a name for it: the infinite workday.
And that’s exactly the problem today’s guests set out to fix. Mark Barbir and Sanden Gocka are the founders of Earmark — an AI meeting note taker that turns live conversations into shippable work in real time. We get into how they actually use it day to day, how it helps product teams, where the new bottleneck of product work has moved, and what it looks like when an idea you just said out loud turns into a working prototype before the call ends.
If you’ve been hunting for AI tools for product managers that go beyond generic summaries, I’m walking you through them, and you can decide if it’s worth trying.
GUESTS
Mark Barbir and Sanden Gocka are the co-founders of Earmark. They previously worked together at Mindbody, a large enterprise SaaS company with a 400-person delivery organisation, and later crossed paths again at ProductPlan, where Sanden was an engineering manager and director. After years of watching product and engineering leaders drown in meetings and artefact work, they set out to build the tool they wished they had: an AI meeting assistant that generates the artefacts a conversation implies, in real time, while the meeting is still happening.
Mark’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbarbir/Sanden
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandengocka
Earmark: https://www.tryearmark.com
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 The Invisible Second Shift: PM Meetings Problem
01:49 The Infinite Workday: Why PMs Work After Hours
07:49 Vision Pro Pivot: From Presentation Coach to Meeting AI
11:35 Why Vision Pro Failed (and What They Learned)
14:13 Engineering Translator Card: Understanding Technical Talk
16:00 Specs, PRDs & Code in Real-Time During Meetings
19:00 Make Me Look Smart: AI for Shy PMs
28:32 PMs Are Now The New Bottleneck
31:56 Dog Food Success: How Earmark Built Earmark
40:09 How to Get Started with Earmark
REFERENCES
Cursor: https://cursor.com
Linear: https://linear.app
MacWhisper — the local speech-to-text tool Sanden used in his early hacked workflow
AssemblyAI (referenced in the co-marketing case study story): https://www.assemblyai.com
CONNECT WITH PRODUCT ENGINEERS
Host: Peppe Silletti
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peppesilletti/
Product Engineers:
Website: https://productengineers.com
Discord Channel: https://discord.gg/4sMtRNSgU4
Share this episode with a teammate who is still writing their PRDs at 10pm.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
podcast.productengineers.com

If you’re a product engineer, engineering manager or PM, we all know how it goes: you go through tons of meetings every day, and only when they end is when real work starts. PRDs, tickets, specs, follow-ups — all the artefact work nobody sees you do. A...