Product Knowledge

At Level 1, you're becoming familiar with the product—its structure, purpose, and core functionality—what it does, who uses it, and why it matters. Your primary focus is still on learning, and your understanding is mostly surface-level or feature-specific. You may know how the feature you're working on behaves, but not always how it fits into the whole experience. You're building awareness of the product as a user-facing tool, not just a codebase.

Key Behaviors

  • Understands the basic purpose and audience of the product
  • Can describe what their current project or feature does
  • Asks questions to better understand user flows and pain points
  • Tests their own work from a user perspective
  • Reads product specs or release notes to understand context

Common Struggles

  • Focuses only on implementation, not the user experience
  • Misses edge cases because they don't fully understand the use case
  • Has trouble explaining how the feature adds value to the user or business

Success Indicators

You know you're successful when you:

  • Understand the purpose of the product and the value it provides
  • Ask product-minded questions about what you're building
  • Begin to test and think about features from a user's point of view
  • Are curious about the product beyond your immediate work

Mindset Shift

From:

"I build features as assigned."

To:

"I build features that help users and serve the product."

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • Who uses this feature and what problem are they trying to solve?
  • Where could things break down for the user?
  • What does success look like for this product or experience?

Build These Habits

  • 1
    Sit in on product demos or user research sessions
  • 2
    Ask for clarification about product goals when receiving work
  • 3
    Track what's coming next by reading the roadmap and skimming product updates—even a quick glance can help you connect the dots

Seek Feedback

  • "Does this solution really solve the user's problem?"
  • "What tradeoffs are we making with this implementation?"
  • "How will we measure success for this change?"

Signals You're Ready to Level Up

  • You test your work with the end-user in mind
  • You ask questions about why a feature matters, not just how to build it
  • You show curiosity about how users experience the product

Focus Summary

  • Use the product
  • Ask why
  • Build for someone, not just something

At Level 1, product knowledge is about beginning to think like a user. You're no longer just coding a task—you're starting to care how it helps someone.