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Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

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Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#51

Post by tptacek »

I did it at ~28 at Arbor Networks, moving from lead on the service provider product to product marketing manager on the enterprise product. We were at the time 8 figures revenue and had a direct enterprise sales team with, meh, 10s of staff.

Age doesn't matter. Worth knowing that a pretty standard trajectory for PMs is: graduate CS at 22, work in the industry for 3-4 years, go to B-school, graduate at ~28-29, start out of college as a PM. So you're kind of right in the range.

I can't imagine how a certification would matter, but I transitioned to PM in the same company instead of applying cold, and I was hired (for both roles) in part because I had a reputation in the field I was in. I doubt very much that you'd learn anything from the certification (or, for that matter, from business school) that would help you do that job.

I could write a pretty decent list of hazards for engineers moving to the business side of technology companies. But for a PM, probably the most important one is: product managers aren't project managers and they're not engineering managers. You have to simultaneously let go of what's happening in the repository while not letting go of the MRD/feature-function-benefits. I found that to be a pretty nasty tightrope walk and didn't handle it well.

I left Arbor in 2005, so my advice is pre-YC-era, and a lot has changed at startups (though less so at enterprise software companies!). Every role I've had since has been entrepreneurial, so while I'd say that I use skills I developed (haphazardly) as a PM, I haven't had a formal PM role since.

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#52

Post by nickjj »

cryptica wrote: post #16
doubleocherry wrote: post #2

Why, specifically, do you want to move into Product Management? To answer one of your questions: Age doesn't matter.

I think it's pretty obvious. After you've been coding for almost 2 decades across multiple industries, coding becomes predictable and tedious. By that point, you've become an expert in many sub-fields within computer science; you probably even started to forget some of the old technologies/methodologies that you used to be an expert at. You come to understand that software development methodologies are just fleeting…

> I think it's pretty obvious. After you've been coding for almost 2 decades across multiple industries, coding becomes predictable and tedious. By that point, you've become an expert in many sub-fields within computer science; you probably even started to forget some of the old technologies/methodologies that you used to be an expert at.

Are you at this stage now, or theory crafting?

I've been coding for 2 decades and I don't find it predictable or tedious.

Life is an event stream of lessons. Things you learn from previous events don't automatically become useless just because there's a new tech trend in town.

For example, when I was writing PHP code in 2000, I still apply the lessons I learned then to code I write today in non-PHP languages. Those lessons I've learned are what makes me a better programmer today than I was 20 years ago.

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#53

Post by Myrmornis »

enraged_camel wrote: post #24
cryptica wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty obvious. After you've been coding for almost 2 decades across multiple industries, coding becomes predictable and tedious. By that point, you've become an expert in many sub-fields within computer science; you probably even started to forget some of the old technologies/methodologies that you used to be an expert at. You come to understand that software development methodologies are just fleeting…

>>After you've been coding for almost 2 decades across multiple industries, coding becomes predictable and tedious. Well yeah, if you are still “coding” after two decades you will probably find it tedious. You can move into “engineering” and “architecting” however, which involve entirely different challenges, both in type and scale.

I agree with the intended meaning of this comment. Although none of the terms "engineering", "architecting", "coding" have been defined in this thread, someone who refers to their two decades as "coding" probably does not have a good vision of the intellectual landscape that is out there.

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#54

Post by xab9 »

neofrommatrix wrote: post #46
crazygringo wrote: post #4

My $0.02, having been a PM for many years: Read Cracking the PM Interview [1] (for an overview of the job, not the actual interview tips) and The Lean Startup [2] (for general philosophy). 35 is a great age for a PM, especially since PM's often start elsewhere -- maturity is a plus here. I'd say there are 3 main ways into it -- as an engineer, who starts to do PM-type stuff on a team where there's no PM. As a designe…

Thank you for this. I appreciate it. I like collaboration and working with people to drive projects and get things done. As an IC who has been a tech lead (without direct reports), I haven't had a chance to demonstrate or learn a lot of leadership nuances, but I've recently moved to a scrum master role, and am learning a lot there. I'll definitely read up on the books you suggested. Thank you so much.

You can say it's none of my business, but may I ask you why would you like to change?

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#55

Post by neofrommatrix »

Techonomicon wrote: post #43

I feel many comments here are confusing "Product" Management with "Project" Management. Many describing being a "people person" which isn't (in my eyes) a needed trait for a product manager, but is for a project manager. There are obviously social aspects of being a product manager, but much of it has to do with relaying what's in your head moreso than trying to manage people day-to-day. To me, what matters for the O…

Thank you for your advice.

"In my experience too many people are just terrible at understanding their field, products, how to actually break down product problems to their basic pieces and build solutions up from there."

How does one go about understanding whether one has the right product skills, or has the ability to pick them up (apart from actually jumping in)? As an engineer, I feel I'm somewhat good at breaking technical projects down and solving them. Are any of those skills transferable?

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#56

Post by pretzel »

In my experience there are a couple kinds of product management. There is very user focused product management, and technical product management.

User-focused PMing is making tools that work for people - working with marketing, UX and client teams, to make sure you have a good Product/Market fit.

Technical PMing is more about making sure that you are building things the right way - making sure that the underlying models that your tools utilise are close to reality and understanding the roadmap that you will need to hit so that your releases will always be useful. It different from an architects role who is fed the information about the domain, the technical PM needs to synthesise this for the tech team to build, but there is a lot of overlap.

For engineers, it makes a lot of sense to become a technical PM, via being a team lead/architect, managing your devs more and coding less, and understanding more about why you are building what you are building that how what you are building it, and working with other PMs. From there, you do become more and more part of the design process, going up the food chain as it were, closer to the source of your user stories.

It's not the quick way of doing it, but PMs who understand the entire ecosystem are obviously more well rounded and may well be more effective than ones who have fallen into it from client management or marketing!

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#57

Post by neofrommatrix »

BlackJack wrote: post #26

One thing to think about - are you looking to transition in your current company or in a new company? I'm a PM at Google. One thing that works here is having eng do 20% PM projects or do a PM rotation for a few months to get a taste for the life before committing fully. I don't know how it works at your company but you could look into taking on some PM responsibilities before making the move. A certification may expl…

I've read that transitioning into a new role in a new company almost never works out. I'm looking to transition to PM role in my current company since I already know the culture and some of the products.

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#58

Post by neofrommatrix »

raymondgh wrote: post #42

In my experience, associate PM positions require applicants to be undergrad CS students and un-modified & senior PM title positions require recognizable PM experience. The roles are very competitive, and unless you’ve worked with someone at the company before as a PM, I would say you’d have to be pretty special to be considered. I think a successful PM’s strongest asset is the trust of their team and company, so outs…

What was your experience at Product School like? I do plan to try and transition in my current company.

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#59

Post by neofrommatrix »

doubleocherry wrote: post #2

Why, specifically, do you want to move into Product Management? To answer one of your questions: Age doesn't matter.

Great question.

I do like coding, and will definitely continue working on my side projects. Although programming pays quite well, I'm not sure of the long term payoffs of continuing as a programmer (unless you are one of the Linus Torvalds, or in a similar league - which I am no where close to).

Longer term: I do want to get to a point in my career where I would like to influence product strategy (focus on the whys) a s a VP of Product Management vs. VP of Engineering.

If you have a complete different outlook to this, please let me know.

Re: Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

#60

Post by neofrommatrix »

kwang88 wrote: post #50
civilian wrote: post #7

I have a random related question-- will product management pay as well as engineering? Or is the OP implicitly asking for a loss in pay?

Engineering is in higher aggregate demand (there are more open eng roles as the ratio of Engineers:PMs is high, and the minimum qualification bar to be an engineer is higher ie you need to know how to code at a bare minimum. You also generally speaking can always add more engineers to a mature tech product as they can fix bugs, tech debt, etc and help the business overall). As a result, my personal anecdotal observat…

This ++. I've been working with engineers all my life, and a lot more senior engineers. I've seen engineering careers plateau after a certain point - plateau at either architect level positions or worse, as a senior software engineer. Longer term, a PM level position opens lot many doors (and especially, if you have an software engineering background).
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