Ask HN: What is the secret to getting a product owner job as an engineer?

I also constantly hear from people who are in these sorts of roles that they would 'kill' for the technical background that an engineer has (as that would make them more effective).

Now there is me, with SRE and DevOps background, who applies for product owner, technical project manager, or any sort of similar role as described above, and can not for the life of me figure out why I keep getting "upsold" engineering roles instead, when I am very explicit about applying for the less technical ones. Is it true that there is really no world for a technologist to transition into one of these less technical roles? Does anyone know what the secret sauce is here (besides the line item on the job description that asks for "having been a product owner/ for X years at a previous company")?

What can I, as someone who is in engineering, and would like to do one of these sorts of jobs instead, do at application/interview time to demonstrate that I am a good choice/fit?

I don’t know the secret sauce for breaking in. I’m sure that once you are in your background will be super helpful. What I have noticed is that:

- applying for jobs as a PM has a very low response rate

- if a recruiter contacts you, then your chances are much improved

- most PMs I know somehow transitioned into it via some lateral type move

With the above in mind, I’d suggest:

- update your LinkedIn profile to say that you are interested in PM roles, maybe that would help with keyword matches

- contact recruiters directly

- see if you can switch to a PM role internally

I've successfully hired one person doing this transition, but that was to be a technical product manager. For everything else, I would skip your resume. If you want me to be interested, you need to be a PM for a year plus somewhere else.

My rationale:

1. as expensive and painful as eng hires are to get wrong, they have nothing on PM hires.

2. I have no idea if you actually like the work, and neither do you. It is very different from eng work.

3. I have no idea if you are capable of talking to customers and prospects. Capable can span a lot of things, but includes doesn't freeze up, can think on their feet, and doesn't say really dumb shit to customers (I have eng that got exposure to prospects and managed to talk the prospect out of buying by the way they presented info).

4. Frankly, PM roles often pay less, particularly as compared to senior eng. That fact does not work in your favor, because I'm basically guesstimating if you're worth 3-6 months of my time to spin up on a product.

Finally, your other issue may be that companies simply hire a lot more eng -- 6-10x or more.

As has been repeatedly mentioned in this thread, your best bet (imo) is to transition at your current employer.

ps -- nothing written in your post demonstrates much effort on your part. That's another huge turnoff were I to ponder investing my time into you.

What I've seen happen successfully time and time again is an "unofficial" transition that then turns "official" when you change companies. The way it always works is to find a project that doesn't have a PM for whatever reason but could really use one, and slowly become the "effective" unofficial PM once you join the team by taking on PM tasks that are blocking the team. Your manager's probably not gonna say no to things that urgently need doing but there isn't approval for an official PM.

Then start interviewing at other companies for PM roles and explain "well I was never an official PM but I did all the PM work like x, y, z". They don't care what your title is, PM's are known for transitioning from every other job under the sun.

I mean, that's how a lot of promotions work anyways -- first you demonstrate you're already performing at the next level, then you get it officially. It's just that the eng-to-PM transition isn't recognized officially at a lot of places, so you need to do it cross-company.