[mic47]

I worked for FB (left in 2018), and you are right. He started as E4, which means that he was not new grad (new grads starts as E3). So he was either phd, or had industry experience before.

His first year: "Because of the 3 launches and building a 4 people team, I was promoted to E5" -- looks like he should have been E5 when started (given that he was able to build team in the first year), and they quickly corrected for that.

[throwaway_pdp09]

In the uk a year or two ago there was an ad showing an eager young guy, in his very early 20s if that, and the text that thanks to this course, this guy was training to become a software project manager.

I almost started laughing. There's no way a green youth can manage a software project without being a decent software dev first. Not happening.

It is possible to have a non-dev be one if they are very experienced and have the right soft skills, I knew one and he was good, but straight out of uni to manage a project, no way at all.

[robjan]

Project management is a different career from development, not a progression.

[throwaway_pdp09]

You can't be a SPM without having some solid understanding of dev. Without that you can't make good decisions. It's like saying a person can become the captain of a ship without sailing experience.

The one good project managers I've had that didn't have a dev background instead put in a lot of time to understand dev and was an at-home hobby programmer so he had a large clue.