[nomansland]

I like how he assumes that test engineering and project management are things you can just "fill someone's time with" until they learn something useful, like coding AND that someone will take 30k a year for. Really? In the valley, both test engineers and PMs for software eng projects are >90k/year positions.

I've done both of those jobs and they've both required me already knowing how to code, writing code, and having a CS degree. I think it's sort of ironic that he manages to devalue the very same non-software engineering skills he ostensibly says to value.

[bobwaycott]

I find it pretty odd that you'd take a PM role that required you to write code and have a CS degree. It's definitely good if PMs understand the technologies they're working with, but requiring they know how to code, and actually code, as well as have a CS degree seems like an employer who is actually looking to hire a developer and get a PM for free. Or vice versa.

[nomansland]

Specifically, regarding the PM role, I took a TPM role. I like it much more than devops/sre(no pages) or test engineering(not as tedious). To be sure, there is also a non-technical PM on my team, as well as devs who do the product coding. While the role could be abused in the way you are talking about, I suspect that's company dependant, in much the same way the devops role can be abused.

The coding work I'd put in the "internal tools/analysis" category, such as writing some scripts which makes sense of the non-technical PMs' spreadsheets, browser plugins which deal with a favorite but slightly broken tool, log analysis, writing dashboards, or lightweight ETL.

The "knowing how to code" comes in use since a fair amount of the work depends on being able to understand what the devs have actually submitted and if they are flat out BSing or not on status, if a particular pattern/integration/library/tool would be a good fit, or having meaningful conversations about testing, scope, and technical roadblocks. The CS degree is useful for having credibility with the devs(shared culture goes a long way in getting work out of people who don't report to you) and not just being another PM having sprints and scrums and pigs and chickens and swimlanes (oh my!)

[mistermann]

> they've both required me already knowing how to code, writing code, and having a CS degree.

All of this for only 90k, in silicon valley?

[nomansland]

If you look on glassdoor, that's around the jr/entry level base salary for both positions, mid/senior level PM and test engineers both are more. Since the article's claim you that could get this work for 30k from someone on their way to learning how to code is extremely off for the entry level, I didn't bother with how wrong it is for the mid or senior levels.