Hi Blind! I posted on here asking for PM referrals a few months ago. I decided to take on a Senior PM role in a different business unit in the same company last month. For context, I'm an engineer (non CS) + MBA, and the move didn't come with a pay hike. I'm realizing I'm not cut out to be a PM. I've been thrust into the job with little to no mentorship and my manager keeps increasing the scope of my deliverables. All I'm doing is collecting requirements from business team and passing it to the tech teams with minor inputs. Combined with writing documents and emails I feel like a glorified parrot. I have a feeling I'm on the spectrum (based on a bunch of online diagnoses, waiting on psych) which makes it all the more difficult to have effective conversations with people, let alone influencing them. My previous manager also called it out as a development area in our last 1:1 I'm seriously considering going to grad school to do a maths + computing masters because I love SQL, python coding and ML. I'm 30 tho so feel a bit old to be making this switch. Happy to take a pay cut for better work - being unmarried without kids makes it easier. What would you advise me to do? I'd love to hear from experienced folks. Blind tax Yoe 6 Tc 140k eur
Sounds like you're a program manager, not a PM
I read you like to build things, you get to do that as a PM as long as you prioritize it. Also need to be at a decent company that understands a PMs value
You need a compelling (wire ready) PR-FAQ to justify building stuff. Are you turning your meetings into narrative ideas?
Lol at this PR FAQ bs
Username checks out, I guess. I'm genuinely scared about being an am-bot that needs a PRFAQ for everything
I'm an engineer (CS) + MBA turned PM so feel free to DM me - I would really find another PM job within Amazon or a new company to offer you the opportunities of doing actual PM work.
Curious as to why you were interested a PM role to begin with? Keep in mind that what you're doing is not the end all be all of a PM ("glorified parrot"), but it is expected given you're an inexperienced PM despite the senior title. Do you have the option to go back to the previous role?
I wanted to build things, in my previous role I was mostly doing marketing and execution. My team does very little 'building' - my job is to collect requirements and pass them to the tech teams in the U, because we don't have any engineers. I don't want to go back to the previous role either because I don't see myself doing it long term. I try to keep my meetings in a day to bare minimum, but I still end up drowning under writing docs. May be a structural thing at Amazon.
I do hear Amazon is very document heavy. That said, I think you may enjoy working in a PM role where the team has engineers. Think people who build the checkout page on Amazon, or the prime membership, AWS data stores, etc. However, you're never really building things yourself as a PM. A PM's job is to define a problem, rally a team behind it, and do everything/anything to get it shipped. Most of the time you're not doing the building yourself, though you will be involved in the discussions. if you want to do the building yourself, you might want to look into dev side of the career.