Part 1 of 5

I thought I had seen it all as a Project Manager. I’d navigated corporate red tape, survived executive roadmap meetings, and even managed to make Jira behave (mostly). But nothing—nothing—prepared me for jumping into the world of decentralized protocols.

It started when I left my cushy, structured PM role at a big-name tech company to work on a DeFi protocol. I was lured in by the promise of cutting-edge innovation, open collaboration, and a borderless team. No middle managers, no soul-crushing meetings—just pure, decentralized building.

What did I get instead? Complete and utter chaos. Here’s how my transition went down:

Day 1: “Where Is… Everyone?”

In corporate life, my first day would involve IT setup, onboarding sessions, and a manager walking me through org charts. In crypto? I got a Discord link and a Notion doc.

No HR, no formal introductions—just anons with frog PFPs dropping “gm” in chat. My lead engineer was a guy named @DeFiDegen69, and my “manager” (if you could call him that) was a community multisig wallet.

And time zones? Forget it. My team was everywhere — Brazil, Singapore, Estonia, Argentina. By the time I asked a question, half the team was asleep.

Week 1: “Wait, Who Makes Decisions Here?”

In my old job, getting project approvals was slow but predictable. There was always a VP or a steering committee to sign off. In the DAO? Decisions happened in forums and on-chain votes.

I learned this the hard way when I spent three days drafting a product roadmap—a beautiful, well-structured plan with OKRs, milestones, and dependencies. I proudly posted it in Discord. What happened next?

• Silence.
• Then, a random whale (who controlled 5% of the token supply) replied, “Let’s DAO vote on this.”
• Suddenly, 40 anonymous users were debating my proposal.
• A dev submitted a counterproposal.
• A governance mod said we needed an on-chain vote to approve the direction. So much for “PM sets the roadmap.”

Sorry, but now I need to go and sort out meetings schedule as most of the team sleep during my planning meetings. Talk to you soon.