I need some advice from all the wonderful people on Hacker News. I am a Backend engineer looking to move into a product management role. I have no experience in product management. In addition, I am 35. Does age matter? Are certifications such as the one from Product School worth it and help in the transition process? How do engineers typically transition to the role? I’d appreciate any advice from anyone. Thank you.
Read Cracking the PM Interview [1] (for an overview of the job, not the actual interview tips) and The Lean Startup [2] (for general philosophy).
35 is a great age for a PM, especially since PM's often start elsewhere -- maturity is a plus here. I'd say there are 3 main ways into it -- as an engineer, who starts to do PM-type stuff on a team where there's no PM. As a designer, who starts to do PM-type stuff on a team where there's no PM. Or as an MBA who has a good sense for engineering and design. Certifications generally don't mean anything -- communication and leadership skills, good judgment, experience and a proven track record are what matter. But all those things can be demonstrated in previous non-PM roles, in order to make the initial switch.
Also, if you want to be a PM then you'd better enjoy meetings, slides, people, and communicating & convincing all day long, day-in day-out. If those make you say an enthusiastic "yes that's me!" then jump right in. If not... you're gonna have a bad time...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-PM-Interview-Product-Technol...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous...
I transitioned from dev to architect. This statement is so true, even more so for PMs.
Leave me in my room with my beloved keyboard! I can sense other likely-minded beings over the wire. No slides, no meetings, no politics. Only the austerity of code, measurements, technical merit.
If you want more (especially control), you'll never have it. Except for your side projects.
But there's a lot of fun to be had between now and then.
Even if you're on a team with a PM already, offer to write a few of the specs. Or if there's no room to do that, then create a side project where you go through the product development process and show your work. Create sort of a portfolio that demonstrates your abilities.
My suggestion that the best way to crack pm other than comm skills is doing competitive surveys.
I recommend you build and release your own product start to finish. This helps you get exposure to parts you got to avoid in your engineering role.
I see product management as a producer role which includes the successful release and iteration. This is best learned by doing and if you don’t have a team, you be the team.
I can probably write an essay on this, but here's a TLDR version. I do like coding, and will definitely continue working on my side projects. Although programming pays quite well, I'm not sure of the long term payoffs of continuing as a programmer (unless you are one of the Linus Torvalds, or in a similar league - which I am no where close to).
Longer term: I do want to get to a point in my career where I would like to influence product strategy (focus on the whys) a s a VP of Product Management vs. VP of Engineering.
Having said that I do believe I have the skills to be a good PM. I will explore this, and if it's not the right fit, I can switch back.
If you have a completely different perspective, please let me know.
I like coding and I like to improve my coding skills and knowledge, but I feel I am more of generalist than a specialist, I am always lurking around HN, PH, IH, looking at products, trying to always get a little bit more about product strategy, marketing, design and UX.
I have considered a transition into a PM role but I'm still not sure I'm quite ready to step away from the developer role, a part of me would like to have an awesome project that I could build my own company around but I'm just not there yet either.
Either way, I'll be lurking the responses in this thread. Good luck with your move.
But from an overall career experience, it will likely open new doors for you. Whether those doors are the ones you want remain to be seen.
I also think the vast majority of PM roles are just implementing some Director/VP of Product's wish lists rather than doing much strategy on your own. And hopefully you encounter good product direction, but IME that's few and far in between. Moving up has been much more about adherence to the company's vision/politics than good products/tech.
Plus there's also the interesting dynamic of overall eng/PM relationship within a company. Those can vary from very good to pretty darn toxic.
I don't mean to discourage you from trying. I learned a lot of doing it... but I think it's a tougher path. Depends on your personality and interests. Often it's much more a people job than a tech job, even for very techy products.
To be fair, the product role is also much more varied from company to company (than eng). You may find a place where it is more about the tech and less about company politics.
My bigger question for you is are you at the stage of your (personal) life where you can afford to take a chance on your career. Switching back may not be as easy as you think... especially if you truly embrace the product side (and also depends on what part of tech you're in).
While it may be okay at your present company, IME it's very easy to end up in a wierdo trap of having your feet on two different ships heading in different directions.
I've also got some funny stories about engineering managers who think I've been infected by some disease due to my time in product.
Source: I started my career as engineering IC for several years, moved to product for several, and have now returned to engineering IC for several.
Sometimes I feel that I can't influence the product even though I care for it - but then I grow bitter and start a job seeking cycle.
For me that's a huge nope, also it's why I love working with a good PM when you're a developer, they're like your partner in crime so to speak!
- Decode & Conquer
- Inspired (Marty Cagan)
- Radical Focus (about OKRs)
Do what you think you want to do. I thought about getting an MBA or PhD at that age and thought I was too old. Now I am 51 and thinking how easy and useful it would have been to do something at 35. Later in life you will almost always regret things you didn't do earlier.
My experience so far: the role is very broad, and the responsibilities are -very- different across companies and products. The specifics depend on many things, like maturity/size/culture of your company, pricing of your product, whether or not it is open source, etc.
On one side of the spectrum you have PMs who are very close to the development teams, and you might still be contributing code regularly. You might be a sort of architect who also makes sure documentation is in order and who handles user feedback/discussions. These PMs are typically "user-focused", in that they try to improve the product for the end user.
On the other side you have a much more market-focused role (MBA type) where you'll do market analysis, pricing, marketing, sales materials, etc. You might see the dev team once a week, or maybe only the engineering managers. These PMs are typically "customer-focused", so targeting the buyers of the product (who might not be the actual end-user, but for example a CIO, depending on your market).
In any case: age/wisdom/maturity matters, it is not a junior role. You will also be in a lot of meetings. You will be the face of the product and you need to enjoy interacting with people.
edit: added the sentences about "user-focused" vs "customer-focused".
To me, what matters for the OP, is that you are actually a product person? In my experience too many people are just terrible at understanding their field, products, how to actually break down product problems to their basic pieces and build solutions up from there. Being able to trust their designers, ui/ux, engineers to take their vision and execute (or simply just being good at transferring the vision in their head to being executable by others.
If you're not great at the above, please don't try and shoehorn yourself into product management. I've had too many terrible product managers that should have been something entirely different in my day that just literally ruins years of people's lives.
If you are not interested / good at the above, I'd consider a more Project Management role, which is about figuring out how to take a team and turn them into a well-oiled machine that loves working together towards common goals.
In many places (like startups) the line between the two above obviously blurs, my only concern is moving into Product Management role that you're not fit for. I say this more in general for people thinking about this themselves - mostly because of all the Product / Project Managers I've seen, I'd say 2/10 of them I'd actually want to work with again (though they both had engineering backgrounds which works in your favor).
"In my experience too many people are just terrible at understanding their field, products, how to actually break down product problems to their basic pieces and build solutions up from there."
How does one go about understanding whether one has the right product skills, or has the ability to pick them up (apart from actually jumping in)? As an engineer, I feel I'm somewhat good at breaking technical projects down and solving them. Are any of those skills transferable?
At a startup / workplaces with that vibe where you don't actually have product influence what you want to do is track how the product progresses in relation to your thoughts on what you would do if you were able to influence the product. Consider literally every product decision and if you would have done that, or something else, and why / why not you think it would work. At some point you'll be able to see if those product features work out, or don't, and can compare that to your ideas on the subject. Hopefully whatever your thoughts are (whether constructive or destructive) towards the product decisions match what actually transpired more often than not, then you probably at least are able to have a finger on the pulse for what's good / bad. For me, a lot of it isn't always knowing what the right decision is, but knowing what the wrongs one are (going down the wrong path too often or too deep is really how bad products are made).
If you're at a startup / workplace where you are able to insert yourself / your input into the product pipeline, then do so and see what happens. If you actually have good / valuable ideas and are able to push them into fruition through whatever current product infrastructure that exists at your company then that should be a plus as well.
I personally believe there is no replacement for having done it before yourself. As an engineer, building products for people whether they are clients, consumers, other business, etc directly are what can give you the best product knowledge feedback. The most I learned as an engineer about building products people want was through personal interactions with consumers of a game I built, along with interacting with clients for applications being constructed and fielding feedback directly from their consumers.
Most of the above handles the "Product" side of Product Management, the rest is of course how well you work with people, but that probably goes without needing be said.
You can't really build a product without talking with the customer or talking to other departments especially sales/marketing/customer service. They know what the users want, what the bounce rate is, what metrics the company is lagging at.
A friend of mine works at a large enterprise company on a multimillion dollar software project. Their dev team has never spoken to a customer or product manager (there is a PM team, they've just never spoken with the devs). It also takes them a long time to ship software. It's very odd.
I really hate the business school in all honesty. Initially I thought it would be full of people who are passionate about finding what a consumer wants and building it. The reality is that many of these students just want to be suites in either consulting, investment banking, or corporate roles. I am super passionate about building great products and working with A players, but I don't want to be another "pointy haired manager."
Wondering if any of you have advice on how to break into the UX research roles with hope of becoming a project manager or product manager further down the road.
It's probably hard to get into a UX role that doesn't involve UI as well. So one side of that is being able to actual design UI, and build out some random "product" ideas with the various current tools available which allow you to design UI + make prototypes that seem real (something like Sketch, there's tons of others). This can be helpful for getting some experience together on your own time which hopefully could get you a junior UI/UX somewhere.
The other side of things is being a UI driven developer and try to get in as some sort of frontend UI/UX engineer which deals more with making user experience better vs fleshing out the business logic / internals. These sorts of jobs tend to exist more at larger shops / enterprises than smaller ones.
The third side (yea, this one has three sides) is to just try and get a foot in the door as a junior PM and grow from there. I honestly don't believe this is the best route as I think all it does is breed "pointy haired managers".
I really believe you need some experience in a space before being able to be a good "* Manager" of any kind, whether that be project, product, engineering, or otherwise.
Age doesn't matter. Worth knowing that a pretty standard trajectory for PMs is: graduate CS at 22, work in the industry for 3-4 years, go to B-school, graduate at ~28-29, start out of college as a PM. So you're kind of right in the range.
I can't imagine how a certification would matter, but I transitioned to PM in the same company instead of applying cold, and I was hired (for both roles) in part because I had a reputation in the field I was in. I doubt very much that you'd learn anything from the certification (or, for that matter, from business school) that would help you do that job.
I could write a pretty decent list of hazards for engineers moving to the business side of technology companies. But for a PM, probably the most important one is: product managers aren't project managers and they're not engineering managers. You have to simultaneously let go of what's happening in the repository while not letting go of the MRD/feature-function-benefits. I found that to be a pretty nasty tightrope walk and didn't handle it well.
I left Arbor in 2005, so my advice is pre-YC-era, and a lot has changed at startups (though less so at enterprise software companies!). Every role I've had since has been entrepreneurial, so while I'd say that I use skills I developed (haphazardly) as a PM, I haven't had a formal PM role since.
When I looked at the differences across organizations where I had worked with other Product Managers, between the ones who selected out, survived, succeeded, and the ones who were great, there were themes.
The great ones (I met two), were charismatic, flexible, technical enough to make engineers feel appreciated, and were the kinds of people who radiated enthusiasm and success. Think ivy grad confidence with an evangelist belief in their product. Likable, clearly on their way to bigger things.
Ones who just succeeded were strong organizational influencers and operators who practically hid their technical understanding, and made it incumbent on more technical people to explain themselves. They kept others talking while they moved pieces and pulled strings. M.Sc/PhD types, classic org power players.
The survivors were corporate natives who brought professionalism to the startups I was at. A few did time in Big 5 consultancies. Often adjacent to confusion, always useful to someone, albeit never clearly to whom. They were experts at allegiances and light relationships and I admired how they managed both the constant contempt from engineering and the relentless outrage of the sales team. They were teflon strong.
People who selected out (I among them) or who rode a product into the ground were a mixed bag of experiments gone wrong. The marketing person with a programming course, the legacy team member, the polymath everyone thought someone else understood, "the only person who understands how it works," the patsy, the brown shoes and patagonia vest guy, the founder in training, etc.
Where I've seen PMs fail seemed to be the result of failing to maintain a balance of flexibility, credibility, and coherence.
There are lots of ways to succeed as a PM and it's a very cool job. It's a rare area where a magic touch is both required and rewarded.
Keeping that in mind the objectives vary pretty broadly. Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that product management is NOT project management. Your goal is to deliver product success in order to hit a revenue target. That said product quality and product exposure are more important than release timelines, which is perhaps opposite of a project management role.
To really understand product management you must understand what drives user behavior in the choice and usage of your product versus the competition. Research helps a lot, but you still always find yourself surprised by the behavior of your users. Your assumptions of your users' behavior is probably often flawed.
Why? As an old developer you don’t need to constantly learn new things?
You do gain some generalizable skills over time (and there are always exceptions to the rule) but in practice, older developers are more expensive versions of that which can be bought at a college career fair -- and the marginal difference in efficiency is offset by the young turks' propensity to work long hours while being paid in snacks.
I don't know if this is true. Even just with my meager 6-7 years of professional experience I can do things now that would've been impossible for me when I was starting out as a professional. Experienced devs aren't just more efficient - everything else being equal, they're more capable along all the axes you can measure a software engineer on.
Additionally if an experienced engineer has non-sucky people skills they can even turn your junior engineers into seniors with mentoring and example-setting. Which means you'll be employing a senior engineer for the price of a junior engineer, at least until they learn their increased value and ask for a raise/move on. /s
I've known three engineers in their 30s who transitioned into PM roles. One went back to school and got an MBA first. One simply changed roles. And one tried being a junior PM for a couple of quarters before deciding, fuck this shit, I'm going back to coding.
One difficult part of the transition is pay ranges. At least in SF where engineers are difficult to find, the PMs pay range is generally lower. You may be asked to take a salary adjustment when you adjust roles. If so, and your life situation makes this difficult, it might not be right for you.
Also, ask yourself, how are my soft skills? As an engineer you can maybe get away without many, but you will not succeed as a PM without them. Am I good or great at talking, explaining, persuading, negotiating, and mediating? This matters way more than your current age.
Age brings wisdom and balance, which are mandatory in a management position if you want to lead, not merely boss people around.
So go for it!
I'm a PM at Google. One thing that works here is having eng do 20% PM projects or do a PM rotation for a few months to get a taste for the life before committing fully. I don't know how it works at your company but you could look into taking on some PM responsibilities before making the move.
A certification may explain more about the role and give you background knowledge, but it wouldn't help in skill development IMO. The best way to learn PM'ing is to do it. And if you're interviewing for a PM role, it's much better to talk about actual work than certifications.
Lastly, age is not an issue and it's probably better if you have more industry experience before moving to a PM role.
Of course, these are my opinions and not that of Google, etc.
As a dev, does it make more sense to apply as an eng and then try to transfer over to PM using 20% projects / rotational programs or apply as PM directly?
Avoid certifications at all cost
You can no longer hit a button to compile your work and see the output (even if it is a small part of the whole). As a PM from initial proposal to outcome is typically 6 months or more. And you fill that time with negotiation, communication and a whole lot of politics (the good and bad sides). Then you may see the outcome you had envisioned (but no guarantees).
It is just, different. Be prepared.
I started out at 27 with zero experience, but I saw that our business had a problem that could not be fixed in my role as an engineer. It needed a coordinated strategic effort to become successful. How to become a PM: see the need and just decide to be the PM. A good boss loves employees that want responsibilities.
Here's what I love about the role:
- You have an incredible amount of responsibility. Owning responsibility for the outcome of your product is a truly satisfying experience.
- You learn the difference between what truly ads value and what is vanity. This applies to metrics, features and issues.
- You learn a tonne about other disciplines. Wearing many hats makes you value and internalize the importance of design, marketing, sales, HR and everything else more than ever.
- You cooperate with other companies which expands your network into all sorts of verticals.
- You prepare yourself to think like an entrepreneur which gives you the confidence to start your own thing. And you're getting paid for it, which is nice.
The not so glorious:
- You have full product responsibility, but often not the executive power you need to change things. Budgets are created by finance, engineers are managed by the CTO and the sales team is incentivized by their own leaders. This means you have to negotiate and inevitably deal with some form of politics to get shit done. Never make the mistake to complain to anyone: you took full responsibility, including navigating politics.
- You are _not_ an engineer anymore so avoid the following pitfall:, Don't tell engineers _how_ to do something, only _what_ to do. If you f*ck this one up, engineers will feel no responsibility anymore for your product and recovery is almost impossible. Engineers will not give you the same form of credit anymore. You are not writing code anymore so you don't really feel their pain.
- You will do a lot of stuff at the same time and you won't feel a lot of accomplishment on a day to day basis. If you can delay gratification, it can be incredibly rewarding in the long run though!
From engineer to PM was a great move for me personally and I'm really glad I had the confidence to jump in the deep and great people to support me.
I thought I was an excellent candidate because of my decade of experience in QA lead roles on sizable teams but I have gotten a reputation over time as having a bit of a hard edge personality-wise, which I'm working on fixing.
I cannot stress the importance of having good people skills in this kind of role.
User-focused PMing is making tools that work for people - working with marketing, UX and client teams, to make sure you have a good Product/Market fit.
Technical PMing is more about making sure that you are building things the right way - making sure that the underlying models that your tools utilise are close to reality and understanding the roadmap that you will need to hit so that your releases will always be useful. It different from an architects role who is fed the information about the domain, the technical PM needs to synthesise this for the tech team to build, but there is a lot of overlap.
For engineers, it makes a lot of sense to become a technical PM, via being a team lead/architect, managing your devs more and coding less, and understanding more about why you are building what you are building that how what you are building it, and working with other PMs. From there, you do become more and more part of the design process, going up the food chain as it were, closer to the source of your user stories.
It's not the quick way of doing it, but PMs who understand the entire ecosystem are obviously more well rounded and may well be more effective than ones who have fallen into it from client management or marketing!
Also agreed that you really have to enjoy meetings. It's no longer a development role. It's a role where you become the communication line between the dev team and the client/users/QA/other depts.
You have to really understand what people are saying even when they're not saying. You also have to be really good at reading body language - people slouching when they're stuck or on something, or their eyes lighting up when you tell them something they want to hear. You have to be good at giving the right questions to unlock these answers.
It's incredibly difficult to go from being developer to product because product does everything developers shouldn't be doing.
I'd say the fastest route is to be a startup founder. A slightly slower route is to take on the product role at your company, but this usually means a performance hit because you can't develop well when 2-4 days of your week are dedicated to meetings.
You can also directly ask your boss if you can transition into the role. People who want to take product roles are very rare and expensive, and developers are much more valuable for the role vs people who took some certification.
From experience, there's only one thing that is hard to come up with and to convince a company to hire you as a PM - your strategic thinking. I compare that to your ability to crack an algo problem on a whiteboard during a technical interview for a developer. You can be the best backend engineer in the world, you have to show your problem solving skills on a whiteboard in order to be considered as a "great" candidate.
All the other skills are workable, maybe communication skills don't necessarily come naturally for a developer. We all have different communication styles anyway, this is part of our identity. But you can learn how to design a great product, how to identify customer needs, write up documents, make a power point presentation, communicate with other teams, coordinate, etc. etc. Though, strategy is something that you will acquire throughout the years. That involves making a lot of mistakes as a PM, be exposed to a lot of different problems as a PM, etc.
You will most likely get rejected during the hiring process because of a lack of strategic thinking. Google about it, learn, work that area as much as you can. Good luck!
What does matter is what you like to do. If you are technical, like to try new things, implement, build , etc... things, then you might find Product Management quite boring.
If you are a « people » person and view yourself in a role between Marketing and Engineering, then go for it!
At 35, you might not know what you really like, yet... Might simply go for it for some time, and then if you decide to go back to a “builder” position, you will know _why_.
If you stay in tech, you will be forever slinging code and at the whim of the business. You will forever be on the tech treadmill, learning new frameworks, languages, and programming languages. You will have an artificial compensation ceiling.
If you move into management, those problems turn into different problems, but with more upside. You develop your soft skills. You network. You learn to manage, shielding your team from bullshit above while helping your ICs develop themselves. If you're a good manager, they will follow you for the rest of your career to where ever you go. This is an asset not to be understated. No 10x developer can ever compete with a manager bringing a solid team with them.
Your potential is then limited less by what you know, and more who and what opportunities you're aware of. Your skills will be transferable to other industries, even the public sector. Again, I can't stress this enough. Could you take a year off as a developer or other technologist and have an easy time coming back into the market? From my research, the answer is no.
With time, you won't just be a product owner/manager; if done properly, you will be able to demonstrate that you can solve business problems while having a solid foundation of the technical underpinnings required to solve those problems. And everyone is looking for competent business problem solvers.
Cheers!
Personally, as a developer-turned-PM-turned-Product Lead, I can ascertain that a lot of the advice on this thread is largely sound. I will also add that when you first start out as a PM, you will make a lot of mistakes, especially if you come from an engineering background (like me).
By the way, I'll be teaching a 10-week course on product management with Stanford Continuing Studies starting next month (April 2018).
https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/professional-...
It's fully online and much less expensive than a certification program. The goal is to teach you the ins and outs of product management and really prepare people for the role. Not kidding, I've spent hundreds of hours and a lifetime of learning into creating this course....it's the best course on product management out there, and the one I wish I had available to me when I graduated 15 years ago.
Here's a preliminary Syllabus: https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/professional-...
Classes start the week of April 2nd, registration opens March 5th, and the class is limited to 45 students. Even if I wasn't posting this, I am told there's a high likelihood it'll fill.
I started my career as an engineer, but from the beginning, I was always curious about the 'why' and driven to build products that solve real-world problems.
I started a company, but it failed, primarily because we never reached product-market fit. That was a hard lesson to learn. I then decided that I wanted to pursue a career in product management, but with no prior experience in the field, found it surprisingly hard to break into this elusive role. After more than 100 interviews over the course of 2 years and almost at the brink of giving up, I was able to break into the field. That was my big break and I haven't looked back since. I have held executive level positions in Product management, led the conception, execution, go-to-market and growth of products like Treat by Shutterfly (previously called Tiny Prints Greetings), Bills.com, Debt Navigator, Freedom Debt Relief, and FreedomPlus. I am a contributor to Mind The Product, have spoken at conferences like Product Camp Silicon Valley and am an advisor to a few companies.
To answer one of your questions: Age doesn't matter.
You come to understand that software development methodologies are just fleeting trends. Unlike with many other fields, the returns that you earn from investing in yourself as a software developer/engineer don't compound; they start to depreciate as soon as you stop trying to keep up with the trends.
The subskills that actually compound in value are things like understanding project lifecycles, building teams/culture, understanding good coding standards, CI, deployment, testing, quality assurance, etc.. These 'management' skills never go out of fashion.
Move out of your comfort zone and take on some projects outside of your established expertise.
> Unlike many other fields, the returns that you make from investing in yourself as a software developer/engineer don't compound; they start to depreciate as soon as you stop trying to keep up.
This is only true if you invest in frameworks/libraries/languages/etc. If you invest in understanding problems faced within industries and how to solve them with software, that's not something that depreciates.
Just so that doesn't sound like something abstract, take for example an e-commerce marketplace. Knowing that you need to create two objects, one for the order and another as an invoice for each seller within that order, isn't knowledge that will depreciate with time.
On top of that, there is general knowledge of algorithms and a thousand other things that are sufficiently generalized that they can be applied at any time.
Virtually every project that I take on is in a new space and I learn constantly, keeping things interesting. For reference, since we're talking about age, I'm 37.
However, at the end of the day where the rubber meets the road you can't ignore frameworks/libraries/languages. You have to learn what the job/market demands. This gets tiring because not only do these tend to be the same thing rehashed over and over again by some new young developer who doesn't have the experience, but they also ignore a lot of the lessons you have learned throughout your career.
Constantly learning can keep things interesting. After several years of re-learning front end frameworks or even back end frameworks with the same result gets tedious and boring.
Well yeah, if you are still “coding” after two decades you will probably find it tedious.
You can move into “engineering” and “architecting” however, which involve entirely different challenges, both in type and scale.
Are you at this stage now, or theory crafting?
I've been coding for 2 decades and I don't find it predictable or tedious.
Life is an event stream of lessons. Things you learn from previous events don't automatically become useless just because there's a new tech trend in town.
For example, when I was writing PHP code in 2000, I still apply the lessons I learned then to code I write today in non-PHP languages. Those lessons I've learned are what makes me a better programmer today than I was 20 years ago.
I do like coding, and will definitely continue working on my side projects. Although programming pays quite well, I'm not sure of the long term payoffs of continuing as a programmer (unless you are one of the Linus Torvalds, or in a similar league - which I am no where close to).
Longer term: I do want to get to a point in my career where I would like to influence product strategy (focus on the whys) a s a VP of Product Management vs. VP of Engineering.
If you have a complete different outlook to this, please let me know.
Although my background is in design, I’ve spent the last 15 years variously doing design, ux and web development. I got into it as the previous person left suddenly and I sort of took over and was doing it a while before it was made official.
Product management is a mix of ux, development and business, so it helps to have an interest and understanding of these things.
For me the biggest change has been going from solving problems to finding and articulating the problems for the team to solve. I’ve had to hold myself back from getting stuck in to finding answers so that I allow the team autonomy and also don’t accidentally short circuit the process.
The LEAN Startup is worth reading, as is Designing Products People Love by Scott Hurff, and The LEAN Product Playbook. Strategise by Roman Pilcher has some good stuff on business strategy and innovation theory. I signed up to a free trial with Safari Books Online and read everything I could in the time. Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning has some good videos too.
There are many different types of PMs. Some companies want a more technical PM. Maybe a company selling a technical product to a technical audience would find your engineering experience extremely valuable.
My default career advice to everyone is to figure out where your experience is rare. If other PMs have 5-10 years of experience as a PM, you’re the rare gal or guy with years of actual coding and experience. That group will have a ton of depth to help on your PM gaps. But you’ll be the only one who can do what you do.
People change over their career, different things become important to them, and other things become less important. Their interests shift as well. This can lead to them changing into different roles over time.
I would not suggest to someone to change roles if they were doing so because they felt "too old" in their current role, especially if they still enjoyed it and were good at it. I have seen my share of engineers do that only to put themselves into a horrible bind as they got "lost" trying a bunch of different roles for all of the wrong reasons.
B. In Google, for example, many people take a path similar to what you describe, gradually moving to product management from an engineering background. It usually requires demonstrating leadership, and doing some 'rotations' in which you perform a PM role on smaller projects before taking on a full product. Perhaps your best shot is asking your current management to take on product management and ownership duties in a project you are familiar with, maybe even being mentored by an experienced PM.
(Source: was a PM at Google)
35 is fine. In my experience, college graduates don't often land PM roles due to the diverse set of skills required to perform the job well. They move into them after proving capable in other roles. Thus, PMs skew older where I've worked -- 23-year-old PMs are less common than 23-year-old engineers. While I think this is probably try across the board, this is probably also changing, though.
Try to switch at your current company if you can. It's easier and people at your company already know you're a valuable employee. They know you're learning but are probably worth it in the end. Try to pick up product management related tasks from a PM you work with or ask your manager for help in getting some of that experience. If your manager isn't helpful, then pick up tasks from a trusted PM colleague that you can highlight on your resume when you apply for PM jobs at another company.
Yes, lots of books to read and schools don't hurt. But product management is most often an aspirational function. Product management practically never gets executed the way it's written about and learning how to change or cope with these deviations is key (e.g. sales running the roadmap). I could write a book about this, but suffice it to say that on-the-job experience is way more valuable. So try to get some as soon as you can.
Joining our network and seeing how it's done on a project by project basis is not a bad start :-).
My view on PM'ing is very similar to what makes a good 'salesperson' or 'consultant'. There are certainly similar traits among large swathes of successful people, but there's no 'rule'. PM'ing a software framework is very different from PM'ing a social network, which should be obvious.
From a backend dev perspective, you should have some perspectives in looking at an overall system and fully understanding what will be required. You'll have empathy for the work when requirements change. That will help.
Of course building the skills that MBA's,'brought up' PM's, and people who started in sales / marketing will take a while to brush up on. Product School can help.
However, the best advice I'd say about PM'ing is starting to build things and get feedback from users. If you don't enjoy or cant: 1) Decide a problem to solve, along with a goal 2) Figure out a path to solve that problem and 3) Iterate and learn based on feedback
PM'ing probably will not be a fulfilling career choice.
Shameless plug: we have a bunch posted at datadog.com/careers. Take a gander.
However, Product Management is a straighter shot to general management, and becoming a GM/CEO is a path towards some of the highest total comp.
Mileage will vary by company (and probably region).
In terms of compensation, both are excellent.
My advice would be to determine what is driving you to want to shift from Engineer => PM. If it's purely money, there are alternatives that don't require leaving coding (job hopping wisely, moving into certain types of management tracks, consulting on the side, switching into industries that pay SWEs ludicrous salaries such as quant finance if you can). Similarly if you're looking for more influence/reputation – all of that can be had as an engineer if you're somewhat thoughtful about your path. However – if you're looking to transition out of coding because you're more interested in the business / sales / working with people (which was my story) then it's a great switch.
Good luck!
It's worth analyzing why they plateaued (or why do you think they have).
If they gave up on learning, well that's a sad, but good explanation.
If they found themselves satisfied with what they were doing, that's not necessarily right or wrong.
Do you believe they were in an environment where they are well supported and well managed?
Moving to product is worth thinking about; but it's not a silver bullet either.
While you can pick up experience in tasks not typically done in engineering, the things that can limit a person's career is partially independent of their work experience (in terms of the task they are actually supposed to do).
The roles are very competitive, and unless you’ve worked with someone at the company before as a PM, I would say you’d have to be pretty special to be considered. I think a successful PM’s strongest asset is the trust of their team and company, so outsiders aren’t the safest choice for a new hire, unlike roles with more demonstrable skills like engineering.
Edit: I also went to Product School and think it’s a great way to show current employers your dedication to making a transition. For joining a new company though, it doesn’t come close to comparing to what HackReactor does for a developer applicant. As far as educational content, I think the only value I got was talking to current PMs about how the realities of their jobs differ from what you read in books like cracking the pm interview.
I might go as far as to say that there really is no such thing as an entry-level PM. Most people who become PMs seem to do so accidentally or because they started as an APM at some company with the resources and retention afford them.
However, in the end, if you do your assignments, you end up with a LinkedIn certification to add to your profile and the confidence that you are probably capable of being a good product manager. Carlos is really an awesome dude (the CEO), but the website's title "Get a job as a Product Manager" is unrelated to the course offered.
However, I have some concerns such as the loss of pay (no more RSUs), the nasty commute (1 hour each way minimum as opposed to 20 minutes currently), the work life harmony going for a toss. Anyone out here (who made a switch to the PM space in smaller companies) willing to share their experiences ? Would love to know!
One thing you quickly discover is that the pressure is pretty intense. You get squeezed from management above and the people you manage below. Yet, you have little power to push back.
Certs will teach you the mechanics of project management but managing the human to human relationships is way harder and you'll get little help there from certs. I've known PM's that are experts at the relationship part and are happy doing what they do. I've known others that try to push the mechanics and end up making everyone and themselves miserable.
Good luck.
the above is related to intelligence (understanding activity numbers) and emotional intelligence (understanding the user).
thus, it would be good if you can polish up your skills/presentation of yourself in that area
Suggest looking at the rpm program at Facebook or APM (I think this is the name at google) which is for people interested in learning product management but without PM experience.
The best product guys treat the product like their 2 year old daughter. Push code? They want to know why. They saw a dip in registrations Wednesday so they spend hours figuring out why. They are ruthless testers, every bug they label and harass anyone that will listen. They love ideas and quickly turn them into tests.
About three years ago, I got lucky enough to be put into a management position. In order to do the job, I had to put hands-on development aside more and more in order to make room for the job of actually running a small team. We were sorely lacking product management—doing pretty much everything at the whims of stakeholders—so I started bringing it into what I do. I definitely enjoy it more than today's front-end development, although I still love being involved in the process.
My dilemma is how I switch to it full time. Even though I'm trying to do a fair amount of it, it seems like it'll be hard to get my foot in the door anywhere without that title on my resume. We've got a whole department full of people at my company with "product" in their titles, yet they don't do any actual product management, making it hard to make the switch internally.
However, if you drank the 'too-old-to-code-coolaid-sv-bs' well I'm sorry to hear that.
Then a PM role might be right for you.
If you love coding/technology or don't have good presenting/selling skills then stick to engineering... my $0.2.
Thanks that gives me a bit more confidence, since I don't have as much experience with personnel management outside of a few interns (who have been all wildly successful in their internships).
You can join toastmasters to improve your "soft skills".