[dotBen]

Product Management is a great path for software engineers who already have a curiosity for what goes on before and after code is written in their organization. (to be clear, I'm referring to product-management, not project-management)

I transitioned from eng to PM in my mid-twenties when I realized I was good but would never be an excellent software engineer.

I later did a stint as a Director of Engineering and to this day my experience of engineering is helpful both as a (former) startup founder and now VC.

I prefer to hire product managers who have an engineering background, who can work seemlessly with an engineering team and understand what they need to do.

If you want to explore this area see if your current employer will let you work on some PM tasks (building use cases and user stories, defining user profiles etc) or just read up on the subject want try to inject some learning into your current dev process.

[sage76]

I was checking public profiles of product managers on linkedin, and there seems to be a preponderance of ex-consulting + MBA guys in Product management. Very few engineers breaking in without an additional degree, generally an MBA.

What do you suggest to engineers looking to switch to a PM role?

Also, is there any difference in upward mobility for PMs vs Engineers who want to become engineering managers, especially at the big 5 tech companies?

[dotBen]

I don't have a degree in anything (including CS, which is probably why as a self-taught programmer I reached a ceiling - but that's another conversation).

When I worked at Uber, a CS degree was a soft-prerequisite for all Product Mangers (they hired me, they hired a few other people without CS but it was rare). I hear Google is the same. At Uber I also saw a couple of Sr Engineers switch to PM.

In terms of suggestions, I would focus on where you already work and see if they have interest in helping you switch to the PM track. There's lots of ways an engineer can straddle the two and begin to do some PM tasks.

I don't know if there's any difference in mobility between PMs and Eng Managers. I would say that generally there are fewer PM roles in an organization than Engineers so that is something to consider, but good PMs are always highly sought after.

[zippergz]

I think this is highly dependent on the company. I've worked at a few of the top few tech cos as both an engineer and a product manager, and I don't recall working closely with anyone who came from consulting, although there are probably a few. A handful have MBAs, some come from engineering, some have weird liberal arts degrees. It's a very diverse group of people in my experience. It can be a good career path for engineers who are more excited about the problems they're solving and the people they're solving them for than about the raw technical challenge.

Upward mobility is also highly dependent on the company. I've found some companies to be more product-driven, and some to be more engineering-driven (e.g. goog). Upward mobility for product managers is obviously better in product-driven organizations.