I am considering Program Management as a career path - at companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, FB. I have an engineering background, but am more interested in business strategy and intra-prenurial work. #program #management #Technology #career
Worth it if you use it as a stepping stone to something.
Stepping stone into what? Can give an example?
Engineering management.
Don’t do it unless you cannot code
Can't code,
By all means go for a program manager position
Depends on the company, you’re just going to be contributing to annoyances by asking for deliverables. It’s necessary sometimes, but do you want to be that person?
I guess someone has to?
Oh yep not to knock against it, just not for me. Coming from a technical background, program management, depending on the company can either be full milestone tracking and prioritizing without domain knowledge, or small mix of both. Just clarify on the interview
Blind is heavily biased towards software engineers which often don't have a great relationship with PM's. So I would take everything you hear here with a grain of salt.
Yea I know. Program Managers are actually very good high visibility roles. You get to see how the business runs. The follow on question would be do they move up the ladder due to more visibility?
To the engineers in here what would make a PM great in your eyes? All I ever see is how engineers in particular say they are useless.
Good question! I would say they expect the individual to be at least conversant in the technology
This is one of the many signs that most PMs are useless. Ask yourself, if u r having trouble defining what work would make a role useful, then that role is likely not useful. The question should be the other way round. What role can we create to fill in this work (hole) we have. But when u ask what work can we give to this role we created it's upside down.
From my experience in Aerospace, program management is the next step up the ladder and are considered more influential and have a lot more respect. After interviewing in tech I quickly realized that’s not the case at all. The one thing to consider though, if you ever want to into another industry and rest and vest, PM could be a good avenue to do that.
U wanna work towards becoming non-contributing worthless member of the team?
Coding is not only contribution. Product and program managers are important part of company’s eco system and contribute a lot.
They "can" be. Are 99.9% of them are? No. Best I can do is doubtful.