How easy/hard is it to switch to product management from engineering internally within a tech company after 6 months - 1 year of being an engineer there?
No one needs a PM, fyi
^This
@theomega, why would you say that? Could you please explain?
It depends on your skill set and interests but in general moving into PM from Eng is a blessed path.
Wym by blessed?
Like it’s a path that companies would want folks to take. Plenty of non technical people wanting to get into PM, whereas having someone technical move across (provided they’ve got the other interests and abilities) is a great path.
The stuff you have to deal with as a PM is not worth it. I have seen a whole new side of bad behavior and aggression since becoming one. I babysit children that never grew up everyday.
Depends on so many factors. You can never generalize. PM job is an amazing opportunity to become a mini CEO if you are up to it.
YES you get it del
@azimuth I *hate* it when PMs say they can be mini-CEOs because it's just not true. Do you have hire/fire authority? No Do you have decision making authority? Not as much as you think Do you have P&L responsibilities? Usually no. Nearly every PM I know realizes how incorrect that statement is.
That's statement is not incorrect, it just has a particular meaning and context, it's not about getting all the CEO functions and 'minimizing' them, its about having to set the direction for your product and take full responsibility. It comes from this article: https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/good-product-managerbad-product-manager/
PMs have been calling themselves for far longer than this article. I don't care where you found this - it's still wrong.
Depends on what facet of product you’re looking to go into. It will be harder if you’re looking for a traditional PM role focused on user features and easier if you want to go into more of a PM-T role, I.e. managing APIs or services
I’m looking to make the switch to PM or TPM from frontend SWE. Why, cause I can use my engineering know-how and combine it with people wrangling skills and desire to learn all things UX. I don’t wanna be a “mini-CEO” at all. I believe PM is about breadth of skills/knowledge instead of depth. I’ve been studying PM a lot over the past year and see what my PMs do daily. Who knows, I could go into it and hate it. I gotta try tho. Burnt out on SWE.
Why would you do that?
I think My career would exponentially grow as a PM given my skillset