Lots of people want to be a Product Manager. but is it really worth it? WLB seems horrible. Meetings all day and constant context switching. Pay is good but more hours so hrly rate is probably worse. Do people actually enjoy the job? TC 200 edited: PM = Product Manager
^^ LOL.. I started as an engineer to engineering manager to product manager (AWS L7 TC 352K), and I would have been better off TC and WLB sticking with engineering.
You should clarify your statement as "a lot of people with a degree in liberal arts..."
Haha. True. Mostly people on the MBA subreddit.
Why is product management so coveted
Because they don’t do the real work. Just taking and telling others what to do, while making same TC as engineers
It’s definitely worth it but not for everyone.
Why would you say it's worth it? Satisfaction? Compensation? All of the above?
You actually determine what is built vs. being a fungible cog building it. Think architect vs. construction worker.
Jobs are some components of: doing, communicating, and making decisions Engineers are mostly “doing” PMs are mostly “communicating” and “making decisions” Pick what’s best for you, they are completely different jobs. Different people, different strokes. The good PMs I know, love their jobs, even the ones that were engineers at one point. The good engineers that I know, also love their jobs and would never switch. Some people also go from IB, MBA, or Consulting to PM, and they couldn’t be an engineer anyway. So choices are tech company PM or Bank/Consulting Company, easy choice in my mind.
Good framework and agree on the easy choice .... though hey we do PRDs and vision decks too and some senior engineers here communicate more than do here (I kid ;)) 🤪
It's just a different role - some would love it and others will hate it. Used to be eng for quite a few years before switching and I enjoy pm much more, but it's not for everyone Someone above commented about "decision makers" vs "construction workers" In most good companies engineered are not treated as construction workers - it is more about the balance. Each roles has a "tax" you have to pay: 1. The fun part in PM is to define a vision and strategy for a product and to work with a great team to make it work. The tax is a lot of the communication overhead and the occasional friction of having to make a cross functional team work. 2. Engineers get to solve very complex problems that can change the direction if a product (or just be cool stand alone problems). The tax in this case is that most of the code written by engineers is not world changing and even code that is requires a lot of mundane work on the way. Personally, I found that I'm better able to minimize the PM tax than the Eng tax - I've been better able to focus my PM work on leading exciting products than I managed to only work on big challenges as an engineer. Starting as PM is also a little more challenging than eng because you dont have the ramp up grace that you get as a new eng on the team. It's much more visible and if you say something dumb you lose credibility with the entire team Your mileage may vary
And I find it quite silly that people like to compare comp of swe and pm of the same level. The roles require sufficiently different talents that it is unlikely that someone will max out at the same level for both roles. I would have most likely maxed out at l6 as a swe and I already made to l8 as pm (needless to say, an l8 pm makes significantly more than an l6 swe)
6 times more than OP :-)
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If you mean product manager, it is definitely less effort than swe