Product management has recently become a highly coveted role to drive growth while sitting at the intersection of customers, business, and technology. So it becomes important to understand not only what it takes to become a product manager, but also how your past experiences can uniquely position you to drive business value.
There are many paths to becoming a product manager, with people starting out in backgrounds including design, research, engineering, marketing, consulting, and more. A product manager is versatile in general with specific skill set needs based on the team or company, so all these experiences carry great value in adding a unique style of product management to that individual.
In this article, I’m going to explore my journey in transitioning from an engineering background into product management. I will also share what I believe are the advantages, disadvantages, and nuances of having an engineering background, influencing the transition and growth as a product manager.
First, let’s start with the question “why.” In a way, the question is also the answer—product managers always have to ask why they should do something in their product (and answer it as well).
To answer why product management—usually it is a personal choice, but one driven by awareness and market research. Let me answer it with my own scenario.
I was a Software Development Engineer at Amazon Ads in India, building global-scale services and infrastructure for a multi-billion dollar annual revenue earning ads business. From the first day till my last day in the team, it was a challenging and exhilarating journey full of growth and learning. It was also a great team with an amazing manager.
And yet, something was missing for me: I didn’t know why we were building many of these great features. I also had more questions along that line, such as how did we know what customers wanted, how did we ensure they were aware of the new features, and did these features actually improve the customer’s experience and contribute to the overall business?
Naturally, like anyone who is curious, I started researching what these questions meant and connected with product managers in my team and outside to learn that they knew many of these answers. It all started to fit together like puzzle pieces—that a product manager had the information from all these partners, the process to collect data and refine it into features, and the ability to influence and drive feature creation and adoption.
That’s when it clicked—I wanted to be a product manager. To understand customer needs, influence the features that need to be built, and track them throughout the lifecycle to understand the value they contribute to both customers and business. In the long term, some of this knowledge and skill set can also help me build my own startup with a zero-to-one product.
(Source: productcharles “What is Product Management?”)
Now comes the interesting and slightly more challenging part—how. I understood why I wanted to be a product manager, but not yet how to become one.
With more research, I had a few paths to transition from my current role as a Software Development Engineer at Amazon. One option was to do a lot of internal networking, showcase my product skills, and potentially transition into a rarely created mid-level product manager opening at Amazon. Another option was to look for startups that would be more willing to hire someone with engineering experience but not much product experience. And lastly, pursuing higher studies in either India or abroad—especially pursuing a business degree—seemed like a promising path to switch to a product role.
With my own dream of working in the US, at the heart of technology innovation and many big companies’ HQs, I chose the Master of Science in Software Management (focused on product management) at Carnegie Mellon University. While this course was less heard of than MS CS or an MBA, it was offered in the heart of Silicon Valley and provided a syllabus with a good mix of business, product, and technology courses. The alums had also secured good product-based roles, and I personally knew some seniors who had taken this path.
While the professors, academics, and learning alongside peers were great, the job market was very difficult. As I had just come out of an engineering role, my resume and mindset were still that of an engineer (e.g., services, testing), and it took time to shift both to a product-mindset (e.g., users, revenue).
Securing a product internship was a little easier with my engineering background and individual product preparation. I had the opportunity to work at Splunk on a recently launched customer-facing product. It was highly technical and challenging at the beginning, but I quickly grasped the domain knowledge in a few weeks and was also able to share that knowledge with other product managers. I worked on some interesting go-to-market demos and new feature explorations to improve customer adoption and also solved a high-priority customer escalation issue.
The truly challenging part came after graduation. While I was confident in my performance as a product intern at Splunk, conversions are always subjective and unpredictable, and I ended up not getting a full-time offer. Although it was disappointing and saddening to hear that, there was no time to wait around, as international students' timelines are strict and I needed a full-time job as soon as possible.
With more aggressive networking and job applications, I was finally able to get an offer as a Product Manager at JPMorgan Chase. So, it was definitely a journey with challenges, iteration, growth, and finally an entry point into the world of product. And I understood that this needs not only skills and intelligence but a lot of networking and effective communication.
(Source: Adobe Stock)
Starting my dream role at a new company, I had all the enthusiasm to learn and grow. I worked with my manager to craft a customized plan—to first learn the product and domain in the first month, then deliver some low-hanging fruits in the next month, and later drive the key initiatives planned for the year.
While there are many aspects to stepping into a product manager’s shoes, here I want to focus on the specific advantages and disadvantages I had with my engineering background.
Some of the key advantages I was fortunate to have were:
Overall, with any background, there are some advantages and disadvantages. The best we can do in our initial days as product managers is to leverage our strengths, and work on improving the other areas over time.
(Source: Freepik)
Beyond the initial transition into product management, for long-term growth I’ve observed a few key areas to invest in to become a full-fledged and well-balanced product manager:
(Source: Shutterstock)
