And why it’s the best route to Product Management
There is no “one” route to Product Management. For the past few years, the discipline — which one can argue is still not well defined — is undergoing a renaissance; suddenly every company wants to call every operations role “Product Management” (even when it’s not a real product role).
However, If you want to make the jump to Product Manager, I think Software Engineering is the best route.
Why?
Just like being a software engineer trains you to train throughout the software development life cycle — product management now zooms your perspective outwards to view the entire company & the outside market.
Look how well Software Engineering Skillset aligns so well with Product management:
How do I get into Product?
Well first is the obvious step: ask for a product position within your company. Let your intentions be known. Put a meeting on the calendar with your manager. If you are fortunate, there is a path for you to be mentored by more senior product managers, but regardless of the outcome, you have a lot to learn.
I’ll help you get up to speed.
Background
We view a software engineer as a “ground level” employee in the trenches, completing their work as individual contributors & constantly increasing their expertise in their given codebase.
Their knowledge base more closely resembles this:
You have a tight connection to a product backlog associated with (likely) a small feature set, depending on the size of your company.
At this stage, if your skills were a pie chart, it would be 70% technical
We need to tip the scales over time to increase your operations ability over time so you are seen as a Product-Focused person first, and a technically capable employee second.
So this is where you have to differentiate yourself amongst your peers.
How do you differentiate yourself?
The best & easiest way is to demonstrate your operations skills.
Some ways to assert yourself in operations as an engineer:
- Be the go-to for when the phone or pager is going off — you are the systems engineer who understands how software breaks.
- Be the point person on your team for outside communication with other departments — the more of a communication proxy you are, the more you shred the technical skin
- Offer to author more of the software documentation.
- If your company relies on agile software development, offer to assume the role of ScrumMaster
- Spend more time with Juniors, letting management know your inclination to be an onboarding go-to.
- You find yourself in a lead role, begin to delegate tasks or offer to help with capacity planning
After making the lateral step to management, the software engineer now voluntarily relinquishes some of their technical abilities to manage the utilization of your teammates, mentor the more junior engineers & judge performance — potentially allocate your team’s technical strengths where you see fit.
Now, for the final step: Product Management.
You’ve moved from the trenches to being in the maelstrom of the Product Lifecycle.
Great, you now have the Product Management title. Are you a Product Manager now?
❌ No, not yet. ❌
What skills do you need to know?
Day One Skills:
- WireFraming & Mock-ups— low-fidelity mock-ups(Balsamiq) or high-fidelity wireframes (Figma)
- An AB Testing Software — Common Examples: Hotjar & CrazyEgg
- Design Principles & User Experience
- Understanding of Agile Software Development — Common Examples you’ll use day-to-day: Jira & Github
Additionally, Depending on your company, you will need a different skillset:
Early-Stage Startup Must-Have Skills:
- Product-Market Fit — Most important concept at an early-stage startup, Where is your company's Niche? Where are they winning?
- Domain knowledge of your particular industry — are you in SaaS B2B? A Consumer product? This greatly changes the your specialty
- Knowledge of many SaaS Automation / QoL products — Zapier, Hotjar, Semrush. The more you are familiar with, the more it will make your life easier.
Enterprise Products Must-Have Skills:
- Understanding Data-Driven Decision Making — Enterprises often have larger datasets to play with, and you’ll be informing leadership on what the data means & what decisions should be made
- Navigating politics — this one is more of general career advice, but is extremely important. Remember: get it in writing
- Public Speaking & presentations — The larger the enterprise, it’s often the case that the spotlight is bigger. Whether that be presentations at a conference, writing articles to demonstrate product ability or talking with customers.
And perhaps the most important skill for ANY product manager: learn to say “no.”
I’ve watched many-a talented software engineer switch careers to Product Management after being an amazing individual contributor only to find that saying “yes” to everything will bury you & your team. What allows you to succeed in one role will kill you in another. Remember that Product Management isn’t necessarily a promotion, but a lateral step up.
The list above is far from exhaustive, but these are the core principles you absolutely need.
For a more comprehensive list, click here
Will PMing reset my career path?
A very valid concern I hear whenever I speak with more senior engineers & managers is that the transition to product management will reset one’s career path back to entry-level.
As you can see from the Product School chart, that is simply not true, see below some practical examples:
Even at the highest reaches of Product Management, top FAANG/ MAANG companies will allow a software engineering manager / technical lead be in contention.
Here is another example —
Remember, whether you are a Sales Engineer, Marketing Manager, Operations or Consultants, a PM can come from any background.
It is a boon for your company’s product people to have a previous background in another field.
Like a captain steering a ship, you would hope that captain started out as a seaman, and scrubbed the deck at SOME point, right?
I’m not so Technical…
And that’s fine!
There are a dozen different types of Product Managers.
I would put those in marketing as a close second for best field to break into product; they even have their own discipline of Product management called “product marketing managers”.
🔌 Plugging my time with you 🔌
Hey, I mentor those new-to-tech all the time.
Have tech questions?
References:
- What is A/B Testing? Resources: Hotjar & CrazyEgg
- Free UX / Design Principles Courses
- Low Fidelity Mock-up
- Wireframing
- Agile Software Development Principles
- Top skills for a 2024 PM
Wanna book some time with me?
Use the link above (^) or below (˅)
