| I did this. SWE before, got MBA, came back to tech and eventually settled on project management. Pros: - You get a bigger picture of the business and product. As a SWE you generally work on a tiny morsel of a huge product. Product managers and project managers often get to work across the broad product (or even a portfolio of projects if you're overworked), interact with leadership more, if your lucky, even have a voice in the direction the project/product is going. - Greatly helped me work on that "social skills" muscle. I have to actually talk to people--people who are not also introverted nerds like me! - Work life balance can be better than SWE but find the right company. I currently stop work at 5:30 and it's great. Cons: - Your work output is generally slide decks and spreadsheets. Yuck. I miss my work output being the actual software that users use. - The pay is much worse than as a SWE. You're not going to be seeing these $500K total compensation packages that every SWE that posts on HN apparently gets. - The cost of the MBA can set your net worth back quite a bit, and given the above pay disparity, it's not worth it financially. You can also be a project manager or product manager without paying $X00,000 for an MBA. I'd be closer to retirement now if I just remained a SWE. - Career growth: Meh. About the same. At most places you're either junior or senior and that's it. Just like software engineering. If your goal is to be VP or This or Director of That, I don't think changing careers to "a different type of individual contributor" is going to help. |