Ask HN: Transition from developer into PM or product owner role

4 points by hajmo97 3 years ago | 5 comments

What was the transition from a developer to PM or product owner role like? Should i consider this offer or stay in my current role as a backend developer ?

brunooliv 3 years ago |

Do you like to solve people-problems or computer-problems? I mean, from a really black-or-white style lens, this is what it all boils down to. People problems like managing teams and/or being part of meetings where the future direction of a product is discussed, market-fit evaluated and re-evaluated, decisions are made on what to do next, exercising diplomacy, seeking consensus etc, etc... I mean, all these aspects or at least a combination of these together with the technical aspects, will be much more prominent when in a PM role than a backend developer, so, essentially, choose according to what you like or want to do.

An important point: don't see it as a "should I consider it or stay a BE developer?" kind of thing. If you accept the PM role, even if it means more money, the skill sets and responsibilities will be completely different so be aware of that too.

the_only_law 3 years ago | |

> Do you like to solve people-problems or computer-problems?

Tbh even as a developer I feel I get stuck solving the former much more than the latter.

teekay 3 years ago |

I made such transition years ago, and then went back to technical roles.

The primary benefit of doing this is that you develop a product and people-oriented mindset. All of a sudden, you are thinking about the "whys" instead of "hows". You think about customers and their pains and wants. This can be very rewarding if your natural disposition is to help others.

Technically, there's very little onboarding you'd have to do. Unlike programming, there's no language to learn, except English (or whatever language your business people speak). And by that I mean learning to speak the customer's language and using it to define the problem domain.

Long time ago, product managers (or business analysts, to be precise) would also use technical "languages" such as UML to describe the product. This fell out of favor in most industries. Agile mostly killed deep technical analysis (outside of code). It also killed use cases in favor of "user stories", which are a terrible way to describe a product in my opinion. But I digress.

Depending on your industry experience, you might have to do some onboarding in terms of understanding the market, customers, their purchasing decisions, and where do your company's products fit in all of this. I would start in an industry that you already know well.

All things considered, if you already have an offer and like it, trying on the product manager's hat will broaden your expertise and if you ever decide to go back to programming, this will be very valuable to you and your clients or employers.

hajmo97 3 years ago | |

Thank you very much for your reply. I'm considering this position because I've spent the last few months primarily in a BE-dev/PO role. The project is in disarray because everyone starts to leave it. Someone had to replace them, so I ended up taking over the role as a PO/BE-dev for the last few months. Now is my turn to say goodbye and to search for a new role, and last week this offer to be a product owner came in, and since then I have been thinking about the pros and cons, which became much clearer with the help of your answer now.

leros 3 years ago |

I made the transition a few years ago. I enjoy coding and I'm probably a better developer than PM. However, once I realized there were higher level business problems that I could provide significant impact on, I couldn't stand spending time heads down programming anymore. It just felt like a bad use of my time and I was always keeping an ear out for what the higher level problems were and wishing I could work on those.