HACKER Q&A
📣 mr_00ff00

Moving from Software Engineer to PM or another area?


With AI growing and taking away the “coding” part of my job, but leaving the messy real-world on-call and code reviewing, I am enjoying my work less and less.

I’m relatively knew to SWE (5 YOE), but I’ve lost a lot of passion for my work.

I am thinking of switching to technical product management or maybe just managing, but was recently laid off so I have no company that I can switch to another team with.

Was looking for stories and advice. For anyone who has switched, what new roles have you enjoyed? Is it hard to land those roles with only engineering experience and no PM or managing experience? I am a dual citizen with US and EU, is it worth trying one over the other for the switch?

  👤 rsclient Accepted Answer ✓
When I moved to Microsoft 15+ years ago, I went from being a developer (for 20+ years) to a PM. 9/10, would recommend. But also know that it's a very different skill set that you'll need to learn.

The simplest example of this: as a programmer, when your boss says to code a feature, you code it. But as a PM, you have to get a team to make it.

A PM's job is to figure out what the feature really is, and how complex or configurable it should be, and what the target audience is, and how you'll measure success. It also involves making sure that you feature works well with other features, and that your team is moving in the same direction as the rest of your company.

Be prepared, BTW, for the constant assumption that you became a PM because you couldn't hack it :-)

👤 nathan_douglas
I haven't switched, but I'm having the same thoughts.

I think technical PMs are well suited to absorb this. Ideally, they're already comfortable with specifying software, communicating about requirements, recognizing and avoiding failure modes, etc. So that's one route, but not one that particularly appeals to me.

The things that I find interesting largely haven't changed. I'm interested in complex systems, distributed or not. I'm interested in organizational dynamics. I'm interested in game theory and mechanism design. I'm interested in simulations, machine learning, and GOFAI. I'm hoping that I can find a way to turn these interests into a new career. I can continue learning and growing, I can challenge myself, I can expand at whatever speed I can manage, and I can develop and deliver working software at a greater pace than I've previously been able to manage.

I'm definitely afraid. I don't know how to just create a career from a vague collection of things I like thinking about, to just go out there and make money and support my family. I don't know how to "operationalize" these ideas. But that's what I'm trying to do, FWIW.