Evaluating engineers, PMs, and DS
Can someone who transitioned across roles tell me pros and cons of each? From what I understand, PMs take decisions so it's easier to show impact. Engineers have highest pay among the three roles but difficult to stay up to date on latest tech skills. DS are considered second class citizens by most companies and usually require more domain knowledge than other two roles. Can anyone provide more pointers? I want to decide what domain to build my career towards.
PMs definitely can show more impact but their pay is on par with eng. DS is too broad, companies use the title silly-nilly. I’m a DS technically but in reality much closer to ML eng. my team is considered elite and we get more perks than regular eng with better wlb. But I know plenty DS who are just analysts and they are miserable. PMs don’t code at all and spend most of their lives in meetings.
Depends on where you are. I do think plenty of FAANG jobs pay eng more than PM though I knew plenty of eng who made less than me as a PM at amazon as well. At MS, it’s very, very close. Level for level the pay is nearly identical. But yeah PMs spend their (our) lives in meetings.
Can you shed more light into the day to day of a pm. Looking to transition from BIE
Oof. Not enough room here to go deep into it. There are tons of great books out there talking about different PM disciplines and skill sets but really it’s about making sure everyone is aware and has given input into the project and you have the right prioritization and sponsorship. This business alignment takes an immense amount of time. Next is change management. That takes forever and there are a thousand different perspectives on best practices. Main thing is just to get it done. The smallest part is actually creating user stories and functional spec. Ideally you’d spend more time on researching the customer journey but the business alignment is very tough and under appreciated.
The people in DS will hurt :)