Possible to succeed at PM by being competent?
I've interviewed as MSFT, Oath, Google, etc for Product Management. Didn't get an offer for any. Currently a SWE instead.
I would say I'm fairly personable and have strong product vision - I've won numerous hackathons largely through my pitching capabilities and am very effective as a project & program manager. However, I clearly suck at interviews based on my lack of offers and generally don't make strong first impressions in an elevator-pitch environment with behavioral questions (do much better at system design, product design questions).
My question: is it possible to succeed if I'm not taken as a "PM type"? I favor knowing tech details over delegation/removal from the process, and favor data over politics. I've heard from many engineers (and believe myself) that tech people with data driven product sense make better PMs, but wondering how much of an uphill battle it would be to switch careers into a field which feels like it favors MBA types.
comments
To your larger question, technical and Data focused PMs are fantastic. Sweating the details counts, but so does seeing the world beyond the details.
Tech skills and data fluency are incredibly valuable in a PM, but they don’t automatically make you better, and can in fact make you worse. A certain level of removal is essential for PMs to let engineering execute effectively, and a common mistake SWE-turned-PMs make is to get too into the weeds and become perceived as micromanagey.
Interviewers know from your SWE history that you are technical, now you need to fill in the other aspects of PM to derisk yourself enough for them to take a chance on you. If you have any PM friends in PayPal, ask what it would take for them to hire you.