I'm a 26 year old SWE with ~ 3.5 yoe. Working in India and not making that much, compared to even some of my college peers. No promotion in last 3 years and very poor appraisal this year. No girlfriend, no responsibility, as such. Want to make the next big move in my life and career. I have interest in Product Management and being a business person. What should I do? Should I aim for more rewarding job opportunities? Should I rather look for higher education (MS/MBA) in the US? Should I just make through the life with as much ease as possible without thinking much?
Why do you think you'd: - enjoy product management more? - perform better as a PM than as a dev?
I'm asking because there is a wrong general perception of product management. It's competitive. Everyone wants to switch to the PM role - devs, marketing, consultants, data scientists, biz dev, finance (including Wall St), and more. There are far fewer positions than for software development. Econ 101: high supply of candidates and low demand from companies puts the power in the hands of companies, not candidates. This may be reflected in salary (check another today's post about PM salary being lower at Amazon), job search success (another post today about market being tough), career growth, and job security (you're easily disposable and replaceable). In short, to be successful as a PM you need to be a top performer. As a dev, you can create your niche and securely grow in that niche. There's a false impression that you can bullshit your way around as a PM - that won't get you far. On the other hand, PM job can be rewarding. You have responsibility, decision-making power, and variety. Finally, what do you want to do? If you enjoy coding and building software, dev is a good choice. You may look into different companies or teams. There are also adjacent roles like data scientists, machine learning scientists, UX designers. If you enjoy business, yiu can consider business development, marketing, strategy, product management. If you enjoy customer interactions, you can consider pre-sales, sales, and post-sales roles as well as marketing, tech evangelism, growth hacking. MBA is definitely not necessary to get into product management. It may help in certain cases, but there are better alternatives. On a side note, top MBA programs are also competitive. I believe one of the admission criteria is career growth. By top MBA I mean top 3 or worse case top 5. Others don't make any sense at all.
I'd suggest against MS/MBA in US unless you are fine not working here after your degree (jobs/visa issues). Also if you are taking student loans, be prepared to pay them off on Indian salary in a worst case scenario.
Get am MBA for a good school. It opens up many doors in the line you wanted.