Ask HN: Move to product management at 35?

As a dev, does it make more sense to apply as an eng and then try to transfer over to PM using 20% projects / rotational programs or apply as PM directly?

However, if you drank the 'too-old-to-code-coolaid-sv-bs' well I'm sorry to hear that.

Also agreed that you really have to enjoy meetings. It's no longer a development role. It's a role where you become the communication line between the dev team and the client/users/QA/other depts.

You have to really understand what people are saying even when they're not saying. You also have to be really good at reading body language - people slouching when they're stuck or on something, or their eyes lighting up when you tell them something they want to hear. You have to be good at giving the right questions to unlock these answers.

It's incredibly difficult to go from being developer to product because product does everything developers shouldn't be doing.

I'd say the fastest route is to be a startup founder. A slightly slower route is to take on the product role at your company, but this usually means a performance hit because you can't develop well when 2-4 days of your week are dedicated to meetings.

You can also directly ask your boss if you can transition into the role. People who want to take product roles are very rare and expensive, and developers are much more valuable for the role vs people who took some certification.

When I looked at the differences across organizations where I had worked with other Product Managers, between the ones who selected out, survived, succeeded, and the ones who were great, there were themes.

The great ones (I met two), were charismatic, flexible, technical enough to make engineers feel appreciated, and were the kinds of people who radiated enthusiasm and success. Think ivy grad confidence with an evangelist belief in their product. Likable, clearly on their way to bigger things.

Ones who just succeeded were strong organizational influencers and operators who practically hid their technical understanding, and made it incumbent on more technical people to explain themselves. They kept others talking while they moved pieces and pulled strings. M.Sc/PhD types, classic org power players.

The survivors were corporate natives who brought professionalism to the startups I was at. A few did time in Big 5 consultancies. Often adjacent to confusion, always useful to someone, albeit never clearly to whom. They were experts at allegiances and light relationships and I admired how they managed both the constant contempt from engineering and the relentless outrage of the sales team. They were teflon strong.

People who selected out (I among them) or who rode a product into the ground were a mixed bag of experiments gone wrong. The marketing person with a programming course, the legacy team member, the polymath everyone thought someone else understood, "the only person who understands how it works," the patsy, the brown shoes and patagonia vest guy, the founder in training, etc.

Where I've seen PMs fail seemed to be the result of failing to maintain a balance of flexibility, credibility, and coherence.

There are lots of ways to succeed as a PM and it's a very cool job. It's a rare area where a magic touch is both required and rewarded.

The best product guys treat the product like their 2 year old daughter. Push code? They want to know why. They saw a dip in registrations Wednesday so they spend hours figuring out why. They are ruthless testers, every bug they label and harass anyone that will listen. They love ideas and quickly turn them into tests.