What can someone who has an extensive engineering background do to prove themselves competent for an entry-level product management role?

Answer

4 Answers

Product Management Skills

Boris Logvinsky

Vanta VP Product • 2y

Start by showing interest and taking steps in your existing role. Work with your engineering manager or the PM on your team to take on PM work. You can listen to customers calls, gather insights and turn those into a feature or investment proposal, or perform competitive research and synthesize that into an action plan for your team. The best place to make the transition is at your existing company, where you have already built trust and there is someone who's willing to work and invest in your ...Read More

2,975 Views
Katherine Man

HubSpot Group Product Manager, CRM Platform • 2mo

Someone with an engineering background can prove readiness for an entry level PM role by showing moments where they already operated like a product manager, not just an engineer. That might include writing a product requirements doc (PRD), conducting customer interviews, synthesizing customer feedback, defining the problem to solve, or making tradeoff decisions around scope and priorities. A strong way to make this tangible is to build a side project and document how you approached it from a PM ...Read More

415 Views
Anton Kravchenko

Carta Sr. Director of Product Management | Formerly Salesforce, MuleSoft, Apple • 3y

Start with your passion for Product Management and DWIT attitude. Find a team who needs an extra pair of hands. Partner with them in your free time. Deliver results that are visible to others. From there, it's an easy sell organizationally for "why" you should become a PM when the organization needs one.

1,127 Views
Martin Cheng

Shop Ware Head of Product | Formerly Evernote, SAP SuccessFactors, RingCentral • 2y

Having made the transition and reflecting on my experience going through the ranks of a product manager, I would say there are 2 key skills you need to have and really enjoy to become a product manager. I emphasize “enjoy” as I’ve been asked similar questions and once the person sees what a product manager needs to do, they tend to reconsider unless they are determined to make the switch. The key skills are: Communication Active Listening Communication in engineering tends to revolve around code ...Read More

201 Views