From Engineering To Product

As a former software engineer who made the transition to product management less than a year ago, I’ll share my thoughts and experiences that made the transition possible and provide my two cents for those looking to do the same.

Fortune Favors the Tenacious

To start, a bit on my background.

I studied Computer Science in college and graduated in 2015. I had a pre-meditated career plan to reach product management at some point in my career. I wanted to start as a software engineer and eventually transition to product management before I hit 30 years old. I believed that learning how to build software and truly understanding the engineering lifecycle would provide me the chops to understand what is technically challenging for a team to build. I can leverage this experience to better evaluate what an organization should prioritize when I made the eventual transition to product management.

Most people probably don’t pre-meditate their product management transition with such a long-term plan in mind like I did, but you will need to map out a strategy to reach your goal. If you are an engineer and find yourself being engaged at work when talking about business needs, then you may want to evaluate whether product management is in your future.

I found myself frequently asking questions such as:

• Why are we building this feature? Who is the target audience, and what problem are we solving for them?
• How will this feature impact our business?
• How do we evaluate success?
• What is our team’s vision and focus for the year and beyond?

These curiosities are indicative of a product-oriented mentality and are strong signals that your career interests may align with the responsibilities of a product manager. This doesn’t necessarily mean you are destined for product management, but it is a sign to consider it.

Before we continue further, a bit of a reality check.

If you want to get into product management because you want to launch your company’s next 10MM product, you may need to start smaller. If you want to develop a company vision and build a business strategy, you may need a healthy dose of patience.

The reality is that the beginning phase of your transition will mostly be spent on tactical delivery over strategy and smaller initiatives over new product launches. But by working on delivery of smaller projects and initiatives, you’ll actually build a firm understanding of the end-to-end process of taking an idea from concept to value in a much quicker timeframe. As you gain experience, you’ll find more opportunities for strategy over tactical delivery, and you will be tasked with large product initiatives. In the long run, your product management career will greatly benefit from starting small.

After you decide that product is for you and you want to plan out your switch, the next steps are rather clear.

What skills do I need to learn to make the switch?

I worked as a software engineer for over 5 years, working at various high-growth startups and companies. During this time, I learned quickly that engineering and product serve two different functions in an organization and that product requires certain capabilities that you may not develop in the traditional engineering role.

From my experience, I believe that an engineer’s responsibilities can be summarized into three key aspects:

• Understand the scope of a project and its requirements.
• Design and architect technical solutions that address those requirements.
• Implement the designed behaviors.

Based on the above, one would think that engineering is entirely solutions-oriented. That is not true. Yes, the focus of engineering is to build solutions in a constructive and scalable manner. However, engineers are also encouraged to ask questions and build context on why we are building something, and we are even tasked with pushing back on designs, efforts, and timelines when we believe they are not optimal or reasonable.

Product management, on the other hand, is problems-oriented. The role primarily functions to identify and validate problems, not necessarily solve them. A brief list of high-level responsibilities:

• Understand and contextualize customer and business needs.
• Prepare measurable product initiatives that achieve business outcomes.
• Scope, prioritize, and manage these needs and initiatives.
• Work with various parts of the organization to deliver them.

These high level deliverables above require some level of experience or exposure to adequately prepare yourself for a product management role, so you’ll need to find your opportunity.

What did I do to attain these skills while engineering?

I was always told that the best way to get into product management from engineering was via internal transition in your company. Express interest in the career transition to your manager and find roles that allow you to develop the necessary skills to build a case for future you.

I’ve seen others have success with roles that involve interactions with clients or provide you a chance to manage a team. Sales engineer, technical architect, and engineering manager all fit the description. Another option is to work in an industry like consulting where customer and stakeholder management are essential. These aren’t permanent roles, they are stepping stones. They provide opportunities to learn skills that companies hiring product managers are looking for, and they ultimately bring you closer to your desired objective.

However, the process is not entirely in your control. I tried for a few years to make internal transitions, but the companies I worked for did not define paths forward for engineers like me. In all honesty, this was a rather difficult experience. I did not receive many opportunities to train the necessary skills during my engineering roles, but others may find it easier to get their exposure. Instead, I looked to business school as another avenue.

A graduate degree reopens your career and can help provide exposure to the skillset required for product management. The recruiting pipeline at graduate programs provide a somewhat ‘guaranteed’ approach to making the switch. However, I was extremely fortunate in my final role as an engineer just before I planned on taking the plunge into business school.

Before I joined my final role as a backend engineer, I was asked during the interview “where you do you see yourself in 5 years?” I gave an honest response to my interviewer. “I want to move into product management at some point in the future. I am prioritizing companies and offers that provide me a path forward.”

I got the job, but then I never really heard about it in very concrete terms again… until my team’s product manager left the company. My engineering manager reached out to me and asked if I wanted to trial-run the role in the interim while they looked for a backfill. I took my advantage and was able to solidify my transition from there.

Sometimes, luck provides the greatest opportunity of all.

The First Year

I have been working in product management for nearly a year now, and there are a few concrete things I have experienced that I believe are crucial to a successful product career.

The first thing I had to improve on was actually to unlearn some behaviors I had acquired and was encouraged to do during my time as an engineer.

Things like:

• Quickly coming up with solutions.
• Jumping in to solve issues or bugs.
• Forming strong opinions on “the right way to do things” (code standards, paradigms, etc) and pushing for them.

A part of my journey involved un-learning these engineering habits (and I am still working on this) that impeded my ability to learn product habits.

Here are some of those key product habits that I am learning now:

• Think through the problem first instead of thinking for a solution.
• Build contextual awareness and collaborate with others before making decisions or reaching conclusions.
• Don’t get attached with a particular approach or design. Do what’s best for the user or business.
• Being capable in engineering and product management doesn’t mean you are responsible for both.
• Prioritization is a learning process.

My three biggest pieces of advice for new product managers:

• Find a mentor. Mentorship is crucial for someone entering a new role or industry. Mentors enable you to learn quickly, give you a starters guide to work from, and provide you a safety net to catch any shortcomings as you ramp up.
• Learn how to deliver. Delivery doesn’t sound like the most exciting part of product management, but it is a crucial aspect nonetheless. Visioning strategic grand plans is great, but plans don’t matter unless you get it out to real users and they are able to use it. In the last year, I have come to realize that delivery is probably the most important thing to focus on. Managing multiple timelines for ongoing initiatives and being able to stay on top of the minutia are critical to success.
• Build a process. Create a start-to-finish process or work with your mentor to help develop one for yourself. Keep track of things and stay on top of them. You may initially find yourself feeling like you are accomplishing a series of tasks instead of truly product managing. Creating a process that works for you will establish your footing, build a routine, and ingrain a mental model of the new responsibilities you have.

Parting Thoughts

Making the switch to product from engineering can be quite the experience. My transition was a long time coming, and my experience was fraught with difficulties despite all of the planning. You may find your transition extremely simple or you may face similar challenges. Regardless, your tenacity and drive to reach a certain goal will be core to your journey.

If you are looking for product management literature to learn more, try starting with the books in this visual guide. I haven’t read all of these myself, but my past mentors have recommended several of them.

Marty Cagan’s books are excellent. Most product managers that I have met or worked with are aware of his works and highly recommend them. I personally found “Escaping the Build Trap” by Melissa Perri to be a great read that was written like a case-study, which provides a more grounded way of learning and thinking about product management.

Good luck on your product journey!