Is a PM job more chill than engineering?

Jun 29, 2021 9 Comments

I hate work and wanna coast as much as possible. It’s hard to do that as SWE as your work output is clearly visible(number of PRs and code lines). It seems PMs occasionally publish some PRDs and attend some meetings to exchange ideas which I already do anyway as a full stack engineer. Should I consider switching to PM to make life better? I don’t mind some pay decrease at all.

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 9 Comments
  • DocuSign
    ghechipbdb

    Go to company page DocuSign

    ghechipbdb
    Absolutely not. In fact it is even more stressful. PMs are responsible for the success or failure of a product. They are responsible to keep all stakeholders of a product team (which is usually a LOT), happy, motivated, and informed. They need to make hard decisions and trade offs and steer a product to launch successfully while navigating obstacles. They are the face of the product and need to interact with C suite and take on blame and accountability for anything that goes wrong.

    If you hate work, PM is not the right role. It’s more of a “leadership” type of a role that requires a lot of dedication and hard work.
    Jun 29, 2021 1
  • HotSchedules / IT
    yikes1

    HotSchedules IT

    yikes1
    This is funny. PMs work hard and have to attend meetings, think on their feet, answer questions for really smart people while considering the entire pic: customer impact, timeline impact, bottom line impact, eng impact, etc etc all while evaluating the question and feature. They are juggling many balls and don’t get to plan their work in a sprint with capacity. No one asks what capacity is and how long will it take to prepare a presentation and then present. All for less money than an engineer. Even on blockers, eng has to fix but PM owns communication and is involved every step of the way. It’s not a coasting job.
    Jun 29, 2021 1
  • Not it is not an easy job. That is why so many PMs are bad at their job.
    Jun 29, 2021 1
  • Amazon
    rr0315

    Go to company page Amazon

    rr0315
    I have both SDE and PMs under me and my assessment is PMs put in way more hours and are in the line of fire more often. SDE do have on call but if you are careful on the team you join that shouldn’t be terrible. In reality a decent SDE doesn’t have to impress tons of people to keep their job and get a good rating, where as PM get exposed to leadership far more often. In OLR I can talk about a PM multiple levels below me but SDE I generally rely on the SDMs. That is also why it’s easier to promote PMs to L7+.

    The truth is the typical PM is easier to replace than SDE with less competition hiring them. So leaders tend to be more forgiving of SDEs than PMs because they tend to believe we can find new PM. Scarcity of good devs is why they get paid more but the reality is a great PM at times can be more critical to the success of a product/team. SDEs aren’t facing down VPs and getting teams to align. That changes when you become an L6 SDM, but stick to L5/L6 SDE and you definitely can coast more than other functions. Even at Amazon you don’t have to be the best to survive, just don’t be the worst.
    Jun 29, 2021 0
  • Pm I know at tech company are not chill and more stressed to hit dates without resources
    Jul 1, 2021 0