[ebun]

Product Manager here. Are most PM's really that non-technical?

I have a B.S. in Computer Engineering and worked as a dev for 3 years before becoming a PM. I thought that my path into product management was a common one. Is this not the case?

[brettinlj]

Depends on the company sometimes. I happen to come from a strong engineering background (good school, worked as an engineer at companies from Qualcomm, to small startups to Disney) and got into product after working with a good one.

I am the minority at my current place of work but given the companies most of us reading this are interested in, I think having an engineering background is an advantage. It can be substituted for other analytical backgrounds, but you really need a strong product lead that can spend the time to be the voice of the customer (and their unmet needs) while also getting into the gritty details (ex. hey, have you thought about how Hadoop could be helpful here?).

Most on here that are badmouthing product managers have worked with bad ones. I was there once.

[devs1010]

The product manager at my job is completely non-technical, and this seems to have been by design (they just filled it from an internal candidate a couple months ago), basically she is supposed to be the bridge between engineering and the "stakeholders", so to speak and make sure their vision matches what is happening. To handle the technical side of things we have another manager that does have a technical background, loosely termed the "project architect". All technical decision go through him or the CTO, the fluff stuff and touchy feel stuff goes through the product manager.

[brettinlj]

Recipe for disaster. Spoken from a product manager.

[devs1010]

I agree to an extent but they do need someone to basically take all the crap from the "stakeholders" and it may be better to not waste that on someone with technical knowledge