whats the difference between the PM roles at amazon? ive heard of 4 different roles: - Product Manager - Product manager - technical - Program Manager - Technical Program manager what’s what? TC: 204 #pm #productmanager #programmanager
Which has a good career path ... adding sdm to the mix as well
Can someone from Amazon respond to this please?
None of these roles’s definitions are set in stone. Each company and org has their own interpretation. But the following generally holds true. Product Manager: oversees a product or feature initiative. Writes PRDs and works with developers and clients day to day to launch the product Product Manager Technical: works in the same capacity but on more technical projects. Usually more TC. Program Manager: manages initiatives at a more strategic scope and is more akin to a high-level project manager TPM: A project manager with technical expertise that is focused on enabling engineering delivery and resource allocation. Works with devs and QA to set up meetings and ensure that agile rituals are followed. They communicate timeline updates to clients.
Product managers determine what business problems need to be solved, how to measure success. PMTs do the same, but for more-technical products (i.e. work closely with engineers, contribute to system design). Product is kind of the CEO of the thing being built, and generally greets high credit and blame. TPMs work on the roadmap, dependencies, and making sure we deliver on time. Maybe the highest stress, since they are accountable if the engineering roadmap falls behind for their team or another. They work directly with the engineering teams like PMTs, and there’s often some overlap. Program managers tend to not work with engineering much at all, like making operational SOPs or planning rollouts. Some do a bit of technical work, but rarely. This is often the more tactical, boring work like making sure people are using products correctly, going on wild goose chase deep dives, writing docs nobody will look at after the first review. At Amazon, program is not at all like a higher level product manager, more like a rollout and operations manager in my experience. More entry roles are around and expectations are lower. PMTs and TPMs are the highest paid and generally most respected, but also have higher expectations and may not move up as quickly. PMT here.
Thank you!!! This was super helpful!
No problem, good luck with the process.
Depends on the team. TPMs are more directly involved in the day to day because they're responsible for delivering on time. Product is more on the high level for priority, i.e. we have to delay an item, or bring one up, what moves back? Engineering managers (SDMs, software development managers) are more involved in saying who will do the coding, how it will be built (low level design), and how much time it's going to take. Program and product vary in how involved they are in design reviews (how). SDMs or sometimes even senior SDEs tend to run sprint planning and reviews.
Just be good at all of it bc your success depends on you doing other people's jobs. Like, ferreal
At Amazon TPM L5 what is the base pay? For Australia
There's also a Technical Product Manager
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There’s a resource in the job leveling guides that actually does a good job of comparing these including a matrix of business acumen, technical skills and work performed. I’d go give it a read because it’s one of the better career resource docs I’ve seen.
Where can I find this? Is it available externally? I’m not an Amazonian
My apologies. I missed that entirely. It’s internal.