I’m looking at opportunities and need help to understand the difference between these roles at these top companies. Amazon: Per my research, sounds like TPM is like a Project Manager and not really that technical? How does PM-T compare to it as far as compensation, reputation and wlb? Facebook: TPM seems to also be more of a project manager and found mostly in infra teams, and is not respected at all. PM (Product Manager) is the way to go if you want to work on customer facing stuff? Google: Kinda the same as Facebook? As for interviews, what can I expect in terms of technical stuff for each of these roles at each of these companies? I’m a MSFT PM with 12 years of experience and would rate me as mid-range technical, but cannot write code anymore. So for example, I think that Google always has a technical interview but not clear if that’s for both PM and TPM roles.
Both PM-T and TPM are considered and are tagged as technical roles at Amazon and will require you to pass a technical bar (usually assessed via systems design, architecture, and capacity planning questions in the interview). PM-T roles assumes that you meet all qualities of Product Manager and can operate in a highly technical environment seamlessly working with complex systems and architectural designs. As for TPM, as you grow in levels you will do more high level risk and dependency management as well as driving complex service and application integration and deployment.
www.mariogerard.com/interview-questions-for-a-technical-program-manager-tpm/ & www.mariogerard.com/technical-program-managers-vs-product-managers-vs-product-managers-technical-vs-engineering-managers/ are good resources to start with.