Thinking of moving from Software Engineer to PM role.

Question

I started off my career as a Test Engineer and slowly transationed into Software Engineer.  Now I'm thinking of transationing into a Project Management / Product Management role. What are your thought and/or experiance with this?

TruthSeeker · Accepted Answer

I think I am qualified to answer above as I have been in all 3 roles.

1) SWE for a decade: respectful and all roads were leading to Engineering team (planning, vacation etc)

2) PM / SDM: had to BS about ppl performance and I felt disgusted but management wanted me to make feel bad, guess what I quit.

3) Test Engineer: That’s what I am doing now, it’s pretty laidback but off late demands have increased a lot and so the expectations, plus no respect at all it’s a dumpster.

So my 2 CEnts don’t leave SWE role, I still regret it though.

alstein35 · Answer

It can be done, but likely once you're already within an organization. Think about it from the hiring manager's perspective. They won't care what you WANT to do. They care about what you have DONE. Play to your strengths and lean into your past experience. If I can help further, best way to reach me is on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanjstein/

levelcat · Answer

Project Management and Product Management are VERY different roles. Project Managers are a dime a dozen and Project Mgmt is ripe to be automated by AI. Product Management is much harder to automate; if Project Management is tic tac toe, then Product Management is chess. Product is a very difficult and often thankless role; much harder than SWE, and currently pays less than SWE, so why do that?

Thinking of moving from Software Engineer to PM role.

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