How can someone from a different field like engineering transition to product management?

I'm a fan of pairing. Often times Engineering works so closely with product, it is easy enough to sit more closely with your product partner and work through problems together. Ask questions and learn while on the job. If and when you get comfortable enough, start to volunteer to take on different tasks. I've worked with engineers who pair with me in writing requirements, buidling out tickets, reviewing designs, conducting user research. With this, you can now speak to first hand experiences and learnings within your existing company or any new ones you may be looking to move into.

Fairly easily potentially, compared to transitioning from other less-related fields. Product Management is as much art as it is discipline or science. Leveraging technical expertise related to the same or adjacent PM area helps. Some job descriptions will even require engineering experience or area of study. One major pitfall to avoid however, is remaining in "engineering mode" as a PM. As PMs, our focus should be on the WHAT, WHO, and the WHY, whereas Eng/Data Science's focus is more on the HOW. While some may disagree, for me all these still fall in the category of Hard skills for PMs. As an engineer transitioning to PM you would need to potentially learn more about setting product vision and strategy, go-to-market strategy, user requirements gathering, writing product requirements docs, and prioritization. You would also need to flex a lot more of you soft skills as a PM: communicating in writting and verbally, synthesizing info, influencing, managing stakehorders, driving collaboration and execution, prioritizing, negotiating, inspiring, etc.

This can seem overwhelming. So "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Ideally, you have the technical experience in the same business domain, and can read up plenty on the discipline of Product Management. You've likely even experienced all this on the receiving end as an engineer. The rest is the art and the soft skills which will come with self-awareness, observation of your own and other's interactions, practice, and even formal training. While you may not be crafting product strategy on day 1, getting as much exposure to frameworks for strategy, and even just listening to others make strategic decisions and trade offs will help you start applying similar frameworks yourself.

Product management is not a field that someone usually formally studies for and gets into. This is typically a field where someone gains domain expertise and transitions into the product role to represent the customer and value for a business. Transitioning from any role into another role usually means having translatable skills. Between engineering and product there is a lot of context that is shared:

• Processes for building software

• User expectations and behaviors when interacting with software products

• How a software company works

As a result, ramping into a product role may mean getting familiar with the business side, and customer value, and building the muscle of deeply understanding the problems the customer is trying to solve. A starting point could be joining customer interviews and then gradually writing product specs. Finally, creating new product opportunity canvases for the business to review. It starts with deeply understanding the customer's needs!

Great question. In my personal career journey as well as several hires I’ve made I’ve always found it helpful to try the new role before you go all in. When I was at a startup where we didn’t have well defined programs like Google’s 20% program or PM rotations, I asked to work with the PM team for 6 months on the side where I took on some of the PM responsibilities for a non-critical product. By doing so, I personally got conviction if the role was right for me and the PM team also got to see me in action. This made my transition much easier and also helped me come in at a more senior role. Similarly I’ve made hires who had a similar path - they often either did a 20% project or a full time rotation - and this helped make a case for their PM transition. If your organization doesn’t have formal programs to try the PM career path I’d encourage you to network with PM leads you are close to and see if such a project could be developed.

I think most great PMs come from a different field first. I have not worked with anyone who hasn't but I know they're out there. This is because the context that you gain from whatever your field is will help you have a superpower as a PM to build on. For me that was coming from analytics, so data is a core superpower. For a software engineer, understanding the architecture and being able to translate requirements really effectively could be your superpower to build from. My recommendation to help transition into product would be to find an opportunity in your current role to act as a PM and see if you like it. This will help you understand if product is the right path for you and will also enable you to have an example of your product work to talk about when you do interview for a product role.

For any career transition, it comes down to being clear in your mind and being able to articulate answers to the the following questions

1. "Why" are you seeking this transition ?

2. "What" skills from your previous role will prove favorable as your make this transition and what skills might prove unfavorable ? For example: On the favorable front, knowing how engineering works might help you know the process and collaborate with empathy for your engineering team. However on the unfavorable front, engineering is typically more deterministic, logical and seldom very ambiguous. Product management on the other hand has a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty built into the role. Are you ready to embrace this shift in thinking and approach ?

3. Which new skills do you need to build when you make this transition ? Eg: Engineering role might not typically deal with Product Marketing, Sales, Legal etc. Product Managers need to. What skills would you need to influence and collaborate successfully with these expanded set of stakeholders ?