I still like coding, but I've found being a PM far more satisfying in my day job.

Get a PM job with focus on tech and business. Majority of the people who have an entrepreneurial mind succeed as a product manager. You like the hustle which goes into building something and being a dev in a big team building something wouldn't get you that experience.

I am kinda in the same boat and trying to see if i fit in as a PM.

The transition, like many, had its ups and downs, but I mostly like what I do.

The Pros

You interact with a broader range of people. When I worked as an engineer in large companies, there were very few opportunities to interact with marketers, sales people, customers(the most important). Being able to work with people in those roles gives me a holistic view of a how a business operates.

You get to shape the product. You do research on competitors, deep dives with UX, calls with customers and figure out what's missing and what needs to be built, and when to build it. You have more of a voice in proposing what needs to be implemented because you have more context.

You get to write! I love writing. Many people are bad at it. Part of why I became a PM was because, as an engineer, I was often either not given specs or I was given poorly written specs. Being a PM allows me to write and communicate to a level of detail I want. It's a different style of writing than engineering or back end specifications, so there's a learning curve to it but I enjoy it.

The Cons

Politics. This is a big factor , especially at large companies (and a big part of the reason I'm at a startup now). In large companies, you have dependencies on other teams if you want to ship. That means priority decisions are based on how close someone is to another PM, how strong their allies are, etc etc. It also means higher ups can override your product decisions in order to make themselves look good. If you're transitioning to product, make really sure you know the type of culture at the company. If it's against your style of working or leadership, leave.

You don't build anything. Being a PM is a lot of soft power. Can you write a proposal to convince someone else to build something? Can you relinquish control when a developer says "This is hard to implement!" and your engineering side disagrees? Are you comfortable building something without actually contributing a line of code? This continues to be the hardest part for me.

Communication. I don't mean writing. I mean keeping everyone (all the stakeholders for your project) aligned. As an engineer, my manager and the product folks knew where I was at in terms of implementation. As a product manager, all the devs on my team need to know what to do, my manager needs to know. Sales needs to be kept in the loop so they know how to phrase their sales calls. Marketing needs materials that they can send to consumers. Customer success managers need updates that they can tell clients when to expect that feature you promised. It's an exponential increase in the amount of communication you need to do. (My advice is writing documentation and making sure everyone knows where to look for updates. Otherwise it's slack hell).

Meetings. If you're not careful, you'll have a full calendar. Try to avoid this - product managers need time to think too :)

My email is in my profile. If you have any questions, reach out. I'm happy to talk through it.

Kick ass on the code for a couple years (you might find that you enjoy it if you can get out of Java Hell and start doing functional programing) but, from the sounds of it, you'd be happier as a PM. PMs get a bad reputation because 80% (or more) of them are idiots, but the other ~20% can be invaluable for their ability to market technical work, internally and externally.

This is exactly right and IMO one of the most important skills a PM should have.

It is pretty depressing that in most software companies, engineering makes little to no decisions about features, market strategy, or operational efficiency. You really have to get out of engineering to have any influence in those areas.

With engineering being so lucrative, you see a lot of self-selection where the weaker engineers end up making these transitions, which only makes the whole situation worse.

I agree that there are tons of bad PMs out there. But allow me to summarize what a good PM does:

Talk to customers; either to dig deep into their use case, deescalate a situation, figure out solutions, or conduct research. Monitor the rest of the market. Plan launches, pricing, and coordinate with sales teams, etc. - I had Product Marketing staff before, but they missed context and delivered bad experiences. I find it way harder to find a good product marketing manager than a good product manager. The PM is the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) and therefore takes a lot of shit. The PM acts as a filter so you can continue doing your job. A good PM can even write a line of code here and there. Prototyping is part of the job. Roadmap, strategy, vision, build vs. buy... often the center of friction between what the business wants, what customers want, what the business can afford, and what engineers want to build. Finding a middle ground. You are right; these are not skills you learn in school. A PM wears a lot of hats. People with a solution architect or engineering background with a customer-facing element to their past tend to have the best chance of being a good PM. But by no means is the PM job an unnecessary one - do you want to figure out how to price a product and be responsible if sales can't sell it? I hope you come across a good PM in your career.

'Just hire great people' - what's new?

PS: The success of a PM highly depends on the engineering culture. If engineers are convinced all PMs are useless and they have no real job, or as a real-life example: engineer thinks A, PM shows data that shows B, but engineer just thinks the data is wrong and will do A anyway... it will be a highly frustrating collaboration for both. Please keep an open mind.

I solved it by becoming a product manager. I miss engineering, but I no longer have that angst on a daily basis. I have found PMming is a job where sense of ownership + willingness to work to further overall success of the given project is heavily rewarded. And the precision of thought that is a pre-requesite for engineering can equally be applied to PMming (though not all PMs have it!).

I came over to the dark side from software development. Was tired of implementing other people’s bad ideas and convinced product leadership at my company that I could be an idea guy myself (along with all the other footwork and juggling you need to do as a PM). So it was an internal transfer. I think the good PMs have strong hands-on “actual development” backgrounds. I realize this is a self-serving opinion, too.

Downside is you generally have to let go of direct control of what code goes into the products and let your talented engineers do it. My first few months as a PM I still wanted to commit code and had to stop myself. There is also far less demand for PMs and PJMs at tech companies. Everyone's hiring developers by the truckload, but PM positions are few and far between. The whole "it's easy to change jobs in Silicon Valley" thing only really applies to developers. Pay is also not as good as engineering (currently).