Ask HN: Moving from Software Engineer to PM or another area? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Moving from Software Engineer to PM or another area?

3 pointsmr_00ff007 comments

With AI growing and taking away the “coding” part of my job, but leaving the messy real-world on-call and code reviewing, I am enjoying my work less and less.

I’m relatively knew to SWE (5 YOE), but I’ve lost a lot of passion for my work.

I am thinking of switching to technical product management or maybe just managing, but was recently laid off so I have no company that I can switch to another team with.

Was looking for stories and advice. For anyone who has switched, what new roles have you enjoyed? Is it hard to land those roles with only engineering experience and no PM or managing experience? I am a dual citizen with US and EU, is it worth trying one over the other for the switch?

View on HN

When I moved to Microsoft 15+ years ago, I went from being a developer (for 20+ years) to a PM. 9/10, would recommend. But also know that it's a very different skill set that you'll need to learn.

The simplest example of this: as a programmer, when your boss says to code a feature, you code it. But as a PM, you have to get a team to make it.

A PM's job is to figure out what the feature really is, and how complex or configurable it should be, and what the target audience is, and how you'll measure success. It also involves making sure that you feature works well with other features, and that your team is moving in the same direction as the rest of your company.

Be prepared, BTW, for the constant assumption that you became a PM because you couldn't hack it :-)

Thanks for advice, and yeah that makes sense that I’ll have to learn a whole new skill set, but I enjoy learning.

When talking about a feature, am I doing basically high level system design? Similar to what a senior engineer does (aka this should be a cache, it’s best to change this to streaming so let’s remove the audit db, etc) or is it even more high level than that?

Also lol at the last line, never heard that but I can see why people might make the assumption.

I literally had a dev manager say it to my face! "I guess you were a mediocre programmer or you wouldn't have become a PM"!

No, you aren't doing that kind of high-level design. For example, I was the PM for the "connect to Wi-Fi via a QR code" feature in Windows (you're welcome!). As PM, my job was to :

- demonstrate that this was "thing" people would want to do - demonstrate that it slotted into the existing feature set (the existing Windows camera already reads QR codes, so we just had to use their existing hoooks) - do a quick evaluation of the WIFI: protocol (which, BTW, sucks; it's one of the worst standards I've ever seen) - do an evaluation of the overall market (like, what do other operating systems do)

There was also some discussions with the Windows Wi-Fi team for how to store the connection data since it wasn't a perfect fit for the our existing connection store, plus a security evaluation. You won't do anything about caches or streaming except that they will naturally fall out of your spec.

You'll learn a ton about writing convincing documents, how to find users and partners, tracking schedules, and stuff

Haha that’s a crazy thing to say to someone.

And thank you so much for all the info. Very cool you were PM for the WiFi QR Code that people use every day.

I appreciate all the info! That gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect

I haven't switched, but I'm having the same thoughts.

I think technical PMs are well suited to absorb this. Ideally, they're already comfortable with specifying software, communicating about requirements, recognizing and avoiding failure modes, etc. So that's one route, but not one that particularly appeals to me.

The things that I find interesting largely haven't changed. I'm interested in complex systems, distributed or not. I'm interested in organizational dynamics. I'm interested in game theory and mechanism design. I'm interested in simulations, machine learning, and GOFAI. I'm hoping that I can find a way to turn these interests into a new career. I can continue learning and growing, I can challenge myself, I can expand at whatever speed I can manage, and I can develop and deliver working software at a greater pace than I've previously been able to manage.

I'm definitely afraid. I don't know how to just create a career from a vague collection of things I like thinking about, to just go out there and make money and support my family. I don't know how to "operationalize" these ideas. But that's what I'm trying to do, FWIW.

FYI: At Microsoft, in Windows, the job might be PM or TPM, but the people aren't. A person is expected to be able to switch their focus from one to the other.

At least, that's what we PMs were told when Microsoft Windows rejiggered their PM roles

Good luck, I’m sure there are roles out there

Reply on news.ycombinator.com