Ask HN: Will you hire experienced back end engineer as a Product Manager?

Depends on the org. I went from sales to PM, so I had to learn the engineering knowledge to the point that I could properly scope and spec things. I have been building websites since I was 10 so I was not green by any measure, but up until this point I was employed as a salesperson.

I think if you are coming from the engineering side, you might want to read up on sales. If the PM as mini-CEO of a product holds true where you work, the CEO mainly sets direction (for the product) and develops the business.

So sales (as in talking to customers) is really the part you may have less experience with. I think that exposure to real, imperfect, angry, complaining, confused, biased, excited customers is a good education in this. Your goal really is to interface the market/customers with the product/operations.

I'm a full stack that is now 'Product Engineer', so both PM and SE. My company moved me to that position from just an SE because I was having major disagreements with how Product Management was being handled in our team.

At first they put me to full time PM, then I wanted to get back to doing some code. I felt a bit lost as a full time PM at first, but after about 6 months, I'm getting used to it and suspect in the next year I'll be moving away from code as our product grows.

If you have the opportunity to do PM work in your current team, I highly recommend it.

So, would I hire a SE as a PM, I'd more likely hire the SE as a PE, or SE and try transitioning them if that is what they want. No guarantee they'd be good at it though.

Yes, there are a few things that you can do to help though. When I did this, I volunteered to be part of acquisition teams to work on PM-like activities and I also volunteered to take on some PM tasks from the PM team.

Assuming you are in ENG today, can you take on some work from the PM team? The easiest way is to do this is in your own organization.

You can take the pragmatic marketing certificate, but it is kinda expensive. I would also read all of the free info on the web.

Good luck!