| 1. Don't do operations. That's going to be a total waste of time. 2. Don't do an MBA. Very little that you learn in an MBA will apply to product management. It can help with branding if you didn't go to a great university for undergrad though. I made this exact transition a few years ago. The most important thing is to actually get practice designing and launching products (this is why an MBA will not be very helpful). This will give you a lot of confidence. It will also give others confidence that you can get the job done and show them that you are not just another person that is bored with their job in XYZ. If you can work with product managers and engineers at your company on a short project that would be a start. If that's not possible, do it on your own. Either use the coding skills you have now to build and design a product, or work with other technical people. Hackathons are a great way to do this. Come up with an idea before the event, including mocks and detailed interactions. Programmers at hackathons are always looking for ideas. Many show up with no idea of what they want to build. If you do this part of the job for them, you will have a good experience. Another approach is to force the issue at your current company. Here's a way to do this. Read the list of customer issues. Actually design solutions for those problems and show them to the product managers and engineers on the team. If you have good solutions they will start to listen to you. If you don't, ask them why and you will start to learn how they think about product decisions. This may not allow you to transition but you'll get experience that you don't have now. At the same time, I'd recommend reading 'Cracking the PM Interview' to prepare for the interview process. If you're ultimately not able to transition in your current company you should leave and interview for PM positions elsewhere. Feel free to email me (see my HN profile). Happy to jump on a Skype/Hangout call to chat more. |