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.
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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.
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.