Becoming a Group Product Manager wasn’t something I had been considering for my career.

I had been an Engineering Team Lead in multiple companies for a while, and despite never chasing after promotions (they came to me!), stepping up to Engineering Manager became a goal of mine around 2016.

Unfortunately there aren’t too many of those jobs, especially in the startup space. However, I joined a new startup with a promise of a career path. Things changed, and changed again.

Over the years I had applied for multiple Engineering Manager positions, but I just kept falling shy. It got to the point where it was between me and someone else, and the someone else just “had it”. Eventually, emotion started to take over, and on reflection I realised that there was a point where I just enjoyed work for work, not for promotion. And wondered how I could get back to that.

The proposal

After another failed attempt, I had a General Manager reach out to me asking “We’ve had this Group Product Manager role open for some time, why haven’t you applied for it?”

Personally, I had tried my hand at Product Management at other companies as brief cover for the real PM. How I typically run my teams is that the PM and the ETL are a pair that can step in to each other’s shoes when needed. Once I had to cover a PM for a few months and that really took its toll.

It turned out that the way I thought about things was not common. Which surprised me. I asked the GM directly “Why do you think I would make a good PM?” and it boiled down to

• I was the only Team Lead that asks me about the strategy and vision for the products we are building, and
• I am technical, am able to speak technically but to the right level for the listener, and the PM group had lots of PM skill to pass on, but not enough technical skill that I could help give back

At that I considered the ask.

The goals

I had some time booked off to reflect on things.

I did a brainstorm to think it over, asking three questions

1. What do I do in my job?
2. What is missing?
3. What would I be doing (in this PM job)?

And then marking the things that “bring joy” in my job, and what “excites me” in what I would be doing.

And came to the conclusion that I should go for it, because

• I do a lot of the stuff anyway and have done for a while
• I miss “building things” as a Team Lead, and moving to Product Management will let me be part of that cycle again
• While some aspects of the role do sound scary (stakeholder management 😬) they also kind of excite me

So, go for it.

Three years later

I’m coming up to three years in the role. It’s definitely had its highs, lows, learnings, and opportunities.

But I don’t regret it. While I’m more on the “internal engineer” side of the story (a niche position of product management in the world of product managers), I feel like the things I work on have been because I enabled them, rather than just being a participant as a Team Lead. And that’s really what I wanted.

I now manage a team of six people, not all of whom are Product Managers. There was initial hesitancy from some that I came from Engineering so “What would I know?” but they came around in time to become backers. And I really appreciate that and don’t want to take advantage of it.

And perhaps one of the biggest changes to my world is AI. It has been moving faster than when I was a frontend engineer (and it felt like a framework came out every day). I’ve had to learn at pace, while keeping my patience and learning how to handle the sudden change.

At the beginning I said I wanted out of what I started to consider my “promotion race” and that has happened. I want to enjoy work for work, and not just to “get up the ladder one more time”. That has been enjoyable.

So if I was to go back and change my decision? Not at all.