Career move to Product/ Program Mgmt. - Hindsight tips
For all folks who made a career move to Product/ Program Mgmt., looking in hindsight, what tip/ skill/ advice you wish you had received while you were preparing for your transition?
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Pre switch: - if you don’t have the PM title, do whatever it takes to get the title, doesn’t matter where - interview prep 3x more than you think you need to with high quality adversarial practice partners willing to give honest feedback Post switch: - get used to “nothing is someone else’s problem” and “figure it out” if you aren’t already - don’t expect work/life balance to not trade off against career outcomes - if work isn’t inherently a big part of your life priorities/satisfaction, PM might not be a great fit
Can you expand on the first point- Why should I get the PM title from anywhere first? (I am going for Program Mgmt btw) Second point- Will you be my adversarial partner?
What are you transitioning from?
Im not sure about OP, but I am applying to TPM in same domain, I am coming from Security Engineering where I’ve been SWE. I’m looking to make switch as I’m coming out of MBA part time program 5 YOE
Sales/ Business Development. Recently graduated with an MBA degree.
Make sure you are good and able to prove you can solution, influence others above and below you and create documentation for scalability. If you can show that and find a team that is willing to grow your PM skills. To be a good program manager you need to be a great Project manager
Paying more attention to what the PM on my team was doing and asking questions about their daily activities. Make sure to prepare differently for the company you are interviewing for. For example Google cares about first principles more so than Amazon where they care more about data driven thinking. Fundamentally the jobs are similar but the culture decides what aspects of the job are more important... Years after the switch, my biggest regret is not staying current on my technical skills. Some PM roles have a technical aspect to them but many don’t.
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