Hardware Engineer to Product Manager
It wasn’t straightforward but some courage and patience helped
“How can I break into product management?”
It’s a question that I’ve heard a lot lately and a question I’ve done some reflection on in the past few months. No career journey is straight or easy; it’s an iterative, often confusing journey. The same goes for product management.
My journey to product wasn’t straightforward. There were a lot of bumps, turns and some trenches. I wanted to share key parts of my transition to help others understand that it is achievable with a bit of courage to explore their interests, some extra effort and a lot of patience.
My start as a hardware engineer
As someone who graduated with a degree in engineering, the easy and obvious path forward was to find a job as an engineer. That’s exactly what I did. I started off as an electro-optical engineer in the med-tech field. I’ve always been a tinkerer and loved math so this was perfect for me. Or so I thought…
Realizing I didn’t want to just be an engineer for the sake of it
Now, this wasn’t easy to identify or accept. When I was working as an engineer, I was always asking myself “Why this feature? Why am I not exploring a different more advanced piece of technology?” and the why questions bubbled up quite often. I realized in order to be able to build useful technology, I needed to understand the “Why?” behind every problem I solved.
I started talking to a lot of people, in different companies, industries, career paths (engineering, product, project, software, HR — you name it) to understand where the “why?” is decided and by whom. Something I realised about myself from these conversations was that:
- I didn’t want to just pursue the problem-solving (I wanted to learn more about the problem identification and definition)
- I wanted to work with different types of people (not just other engineers)
Figuring out what it is that I wanted to do
This was probably the toughest part. From my conversations, I had found some common threads but I didn’t know exactly what to do with them. The one thing I learned I lacked was business acumen. My degree and jobs had focussed heavily on the technology and a lot less on the value to the user & business delivered by that technology. I had to find a way to get all that under my belt.
Winding Path into Product — Set goals, reflect and re-assess
I went from being a hardware engineer in a Medtech company to a contract role as a project manager and finally into a rotational program in the financial industry. Switching from one career path to another, or from one industry to another isn’t easy, so I put in the extra effort and networked with individuals in industries I was very interested in. I pursued each opportunity with the goal of learning in mind and regularly reflected on my goals. I assessed my learnings, potential learnings to come and other opportunities I have yet to consider and using this I pursued paths that would help me build up my business acumen.
During my time in the rotation program, I worked closely with product managers and that’s when I came to the realisation that this was the path that would address all my “why?” questions and increase my exposure to strategy and problem-identification, while staying close to technology and problem-solving. I immediately took action:
- I networked with the various product managers on my team to assess my strengths & weaknesses
- I expressed interest in product to my own manager
- I took on small opportunities alongside product managers to understand the role and demonstrate the value I brought
- I sought mentorship from product managers to understand the areas I needed to further improve
My team recognized my passion for product management and my drive to succeed as one so when a role opened up, I was immediately considered for it. I was finally in a place where I was tackling the challenge I always strived to decipher as an engineer!
Explore, Put in the Effort and Be Patient
Once I left my job as a hardware engineer, it was tough not to go into the next thing that came across my plate because it was a job I was comfortable with. Three key themes played a HUGE part at the time.
- Explore — early in your career is likely when you have a lot of flexibility and so you should try to take full advantage of that. I have worked as a hardware engineer, a project manager, and a product manager. before I figured out what I wanted to do and all within the first 2 years of my career. I have worked in the electronics, MedTech, and Fintech industries before I started in e-commerce. I took this time to explore roles and industries to see what else was out there. I leveraged my network to help me understand my interests and still do to this day.
- Put in the Effort — figure out which of your skills are relevant to the role and the areas you lack in. Put in the extra effort to build up your skillset in the areas you lack (either through taking on additional small features alongside product teams at work or by building a case study to showcase how you would tackle a specific user problem).
- Patience — it’s always easier said than done. I had to be very patient with myself and with the job market at this time. It was tough dealing with rejection or having to reject another engineering role. However, I stayed patient because I believed the return on my investment would pay off and I would be able to pursue what I wanted to do.
What’s next?
I am a Product Manager today and I’m still learning. I still set goals, reflect and assess myself to understand myself to now find the specific problems I want to pursue and how I can improve my skill set as a Product Manager. I don’t expect it to be an easy challenge to undertake, but one definitely worth my time to understand.
