(A)PM Internship or Career

Question

Hi all would love some insight on some opportunities I guess, I’m pivoting to tech looking to work the product manager realm of jobs after graduating. Currently a 3rd year double majoring as Bioscience and Global Health a minor in Engineering Management. For clarification I was set as pre-med before this semester and am currently pivotting to tech. If I were to drop my Global Health major and minor I could graduate next semester.

Should I graduate early and start looking for jobs to start immediately after? Or should I just hold off and graduate with the rest of my class. For reference, I’m not really enjoying college and kind of just really burnt out at this point. As for experience I’m familiar with the basics of front end code and had an internship with a small start up this past summer.

1j8rbiFuan · Accepted Answer

There's lots of ways to get into product but you need to figure out what and where you want to PM. So if you have a design background, you'll want to look for pm roles that work more on the design side than the engineering side. Differrent companies have diffrent pm needs. Gotta do more research on how you can leverage the biosci background you have. Maybe more data sci/analytics might make more sense than design actually...

loriannF · Answer

Hmm... this is a tough one for a variety of reasons but here's my two cents.

1) Drop something. Global health might be better if you're not trying to work at an NGO or something just yet. Bio sci and eng management is a great combination that sounds more technically inclined whereas global health sounds more policy focused.

2) Once you drop the second major, reallocate your time by joining some student groups focused on tech. Engineering societies are the obvious choice if you have them at your school but if you dont, grinding lt problems and working on side projects (like at a hackathon) would be the next best thing. You have to remember you're competing against a lot of formal cs/ce grads so you need something to stand out immediately.

3) The road to PM is not straightforward. I think its rare for new grads to land PM roles straight out of school since you need some field experience to understand the nuances of engineering and design teams and how they work. Not saying its impossible, but if you manage to get a role as a swe or even a project manager, you can pivot once you get your foot in the door.

spciaelk · Answer

Drop the extra major and see if you can take some cs or maybe some design classes but dont graduate early. The economy sucks real bad right now so that extra year will give you some buffer.

SfPm12 · Answer

Double major is definitely not necessary. For PM, soft skills are everything + some relevant background such as Engineering, Design, or subject matter expertise (bioscience, saas, etc)

aspiringpolymath · Answer

Thank you everyone for your responses and thanks everyone in advance if you respond after this I agree I should stop double majoring I might switch it to a minor so my progress isn’t wasted. It’s kind of a significant pivot for me since I was pre-med but I have been trying to learn more about coding and skills for tech in general the past year. I’m definitely more interested in working more with the engineering or analytics side of things I’d say if anyone wants to give their 2 cents for that specifically.

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