What level of technical knowledge does a PM need to have?

Jan 26 8 Comments

I'm currently in an internal tools team in a non-tech product management role. I have an incredible manager and I love the people in my team as well as the company, but I think I'm missing out on some important learning. I'd eventually want to move to working on a customer facing product some day.

I'm wondering if there is a standard know how that a PM must have to collaborate with engineers, or if it just depends on the tech stack and product the team works with.

What can I do to fill this gap? How do I ensure my long term prospects remain solid? Am I overthinking this?

I'd appreciate any tips from experienced PMs

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TOP 8 Comments
  • Business Insider
    WEaC50

    Go to company page Business Insider

    PRE
    Capital One, Anheuser-Busch, Saatchi & Saatchi, Macy's
    WEaC50
    Pretty much mirroring what everyone else said.

    The one thing I will say is, if you have a technical background and are a PM, don’t fall into the trap of accidentally architecting solutions when you talk with engineering.
    Jan 26 1
  • Meta
    yVBi15

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    yVBi15
    Yep. Varies quite a bit by company and even within companies the are you’re working on. Plenty of PMs don’t have a tech background and I don’t know it’s really needed for the role especially if you’re consumer focused.

    That said, I think that’s often why PMs get a bad rap from SWEs because they never had to actually deal with the implementation so they don’t have empathy for the position of SWEs and/or trivialize the work.

    If you’re a PM for a more engineering focused area (say a telemetry platform or ML or whatever) then, yeah, you need a tech background.

    FWIW most PMs at Meta don’t have tech backgrounds as far as I’ve seen. There are some of us but not as common as some places. PMs at Amazon similarly tend to be more MBA types as well.
    Jan 26 2
    • Thanks for answering, I'm new to the industry and I appreciate this more than you know.

      I do have a CS degree and I've built projects when I was in university, but they were never at the scale that big tech cos operate at, and the code was quite slapdash. I deeply empathize with SWEs and want to account for the bad rep you mentioned. Is working on side projects a good bet? Reading certain books? Coursework, other resources?

      I'd appreciate pointers if you have any.
      Jan 26
    • Meta
      yVBi15

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      yVBi15
      I don’t think working on side projects or anything like that can fill the gap because it doesn’t involve unrealistic pressure. It takes having shitty PMs breathing down your neck and saying they need something in half the time you said it’d take or who don’t listen to really have that experience. If you have humility and listen it’ll help. Not treating them as just resources but as partners and asking how you can help (and realizing sometimes that means they’ll treat you like a secretary because they don’t understand what you do and that it’s fine to push back on that). I do think having experience as a dev can sometimes help ask good questions, eg can you explain why it’ll take so long? What if we do X instead does that make it easier? And so on. But I think you can do that anyway. Reading some of the standard texts of the field: Mythical Man Month, etc and things like that probably help. I generally wouldn’t worry about it, it’s really what any person in any role should do: assume competency and good intent of those with whom you work while not being afraid to poke on things when needed. Be gracious with praise and stingy with blame (and that you are the one ultimately accountable) And so on. Even most good books on leadership can teach you those things too as they are not unique to software. Not sure how useful that is but tl;dr I wouldn’t worry about mot having even a dev esp if you have a CS degree.
      Jan 26
  • Meta
    anegpfjk

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    anegpfjk
    Blind rules - TC or GTFO

    I’ve heard that PM interviews have a round for System Design.
    Jan 26 1
    • Meta
      yVBi15

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      yVBi15
      Not at Meta they don’t. TPM does but IIRC it’s more about walking through something you’ve worked on vs “Design Twitter”
      Jan 26
  • Veeva
    SmartKid

    Go to company page Veeva

    SmartKid
    Depends on company and their product.
    Jan 26 0