Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

I can probably write an essay on this, but here's a TLDR version. 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.

Having said that I do believe I have the skills to be a good PM. I will explore this, and if it's not the right fit, I can switch back.

If you have a completely different perspective, please let me know.

However, at the end of the day where the rubber meets the road you can't ignore frameworks/libraries/languages. You have to learn what the job/market demands. This gets tiring because not only do these tend to be the same thing rehashed over and over again by some new young developer who doesn't have the experience, but they also ignore a lot of the lessons you have learned throughout your career.

Constantly learning can keep things interesting. After several years of re-learning front end frameworks or even back end frameworks with the same result gets tedious and boring.

Although my background is in design, I’ve spent the last 15 years variously doing design, ux and web development. I got into it as the previous person left suddenly and I sort of took over and was doing it a while before it was made official.

Product management is a mix of ux, development and business, so it helps to have an interest and understanding of these things.

For me the biggest change has been going from solving problems to finding and articulating the problems for the team to solve. I’ve had to hold myself back from getting stuck in to finding answers so that I allow the team autonomy and also don’t accidentally short circuit the process.

The LEAN Startup is worth reading, as is Designing Products People Love by Scott Hurff, and The LEAN Product Playbook. Strategise by Roman Pilcher has some good stuff on business strategy and innovation theory. I signed up to a free trial with Safari Books Online and read everything I could in the time. Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning has some good videos too.

At a startup / workplaces with that vibe where you don't actually have product influence what you want to do is track how the product progresses in relation to your thoughts on what you would do if you were able to influence the product. Consider literally every product decision and if you would have done that, or something else, and why / why not you think it would work. At some point you'll be able to see if those product features work out, or don't, and can compare that to your ideas on the subject. Hopefully whatever your thoughts are (whether constructive or destructive) towards the product decisions match what actually transpired more often than not, then you probably at least are able to have a finger on the pulse for what's good / bad. For me, a lot of it isn't always knowing what the right decision is, but knowing what the wrongs one are (going down the wrong path too often or too deep is really how bad products are made).

If you're at a startup / workplace where you are able to insert yourself / your input into the product pipeline, then do so and see what happens. If you actually have good / valuable ideas and are able to push them into fruition through whatever current product infrastructure that exists at your company then that should be a plus as well.

I personally believe there is no replacement for having done it before yourself. As an engineer, building products for people whether they are clients, consumers, other business, etc directly are what can give you the best product knowledge feedback. The most I learned as an engineer about building products people want was through personal interactions with consumers of a game I built, along with interacting with clients for applications being constructed and fielding feedback directly from their consumers.

Most of the above handles the "Product" side of Product Management, the rest is of course how well you work with people, but that probably goes without needing be said.