Bijan Shahrokhi 
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Article Contents
Many people who are interested in engineering are also interested in product management and vice versa. So, if you’re in search of your next career, you may find yourself torn between these two fields.
Before we get into the finer details of comparing these two jobs, there’s something you need to know: you can’t go wrong with either decision.
If you fall in love with your first choice, good for you. Continue down that career path as far as it takes you. But should you find that you made the wrong choice, you can always transition to the other.
Take for example someone who started their career as a software engineer. We have an entire blog post dedicated to how to make the transition to product manager. Here’s a brief excerpt:
If you’re a software engineer interested in the end-to-end process of building a great product, including identifying customer needs and achieving business outcomes that answer those needs in a cross-functional team, you should consider transitioning into product.
In other words, the experience and knowledge you gained as a software engineer will make for a seamless transition to product manager.
Product Manager or Engineering Manager: Which One Should You Choose?
The more you compare product manager jobs and engineer jobs, the more you’ll realize that they’re totally different. Yes, there are similarities, but these are two entirely different careers.
Here are three details/tips that can aid you in the decision-making process.
1. Don’t Put Too Much Pressure on Yourself
Regardless of the career path you choose to follow, it’s natural to feel pressure while searching for your next position. You want to make the right choice the first time around, which leads you to think about everything from job responsibilities to work environment to salary and benefits.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that a wrong decision can actually be the right decision. If you pick one career — engineering or product management — and it doesn’t work out, you have the opportunity to switch to the other.
You’ll never eliminate all the stress, pressure, and anxiety of making an important career decision, but you can’t go wrong with either of these.
2. Are You Primarily Interested in Building Products?
If your primary interest is building products, engineering is almost always the better choice. It gives you the option to spend the majority of your time on what you enjoy the most. And that increases the likelihood of falling in love with your job.
3. Do You Enjoy Wearing Many Different Hats?
More so than an engineer, a product manager has a strong influence over various aspects of a product. From development to design, from user experience to competitor research, you’ll wear many different hats.
So, if you want to get involved with different aspects of building a product, product management is more relevant.
What Are Your Skills?
With the help of the three points above, think long and hard about which career path piques your interest. Think about which path makes the most sense based on your current experience, knowledge, likes, dislikes, and career goals.
Along the way, turn your attention to the skills that are necessary to excel as an engineer or product manager. You can then compare these skills to your strengths and weaknesses.
Communication is one of the most important skills in both the engineering and product management fields.
If you’re strong in communication with people who are non-engineers — such as product designers and marketing professionals — it’s a checkmark in favor of product management.
Conversely, if having technical conversations is one of your strong points, you can put a checkmark in the engineering column.
Product Manager Skills
There are both hard skills and soft skills that product managers need to succeed. Some of the most important, outside of the ability to communicate clearly, include:
- Business skills
- Industry knowledge
- Strategic thinking
- Data mining
- Statistical analysis
- Technical development principles
- Leading without authority
- Persuasion
- Prioritizing
- Problem solving and creativity
- Delegation
The more of these you have, the easier it is to excel at the role of product manager.
Engineering Skills
Here are the top skills of successful engineers:
- Analytical skills
- Software testing
- Coding and computer programming
- Software development
- Problem solving
- Team player
- Attention to detail
- Ability to manage a team
As you can see, there is some crossover between the skills needed for each job. Communication and problem solving are the two best examples.
How the Roles are Different
This article is all about how to best decide between an engineering and product management career path. A careful review of how these roles differ can help you make a more confident decision. Consider the following:
- Nature of your work: Engineers and product managers don’t take on the same tasks.
- Product gaps vs. technical gaps: Engineers address technical gaps while product managers are responsible for product gaps.
- Deliverables: This varies greatly across engineering and product management.
- Timelines: Engineers have consistent sprints to help keep them on track, while product managers play more of a support role across the board.
- Members of your team: Who you work with and for varies from position to position.
Research, Research, Research
This blog post is designed to help you choose between engineering and product management, but it probably won’t be enough to point you in one direction or the other. It’s important that you research both career paths, online and off.
Do you know someone who works as an engineering manager or product manager? Reach out to them and ask for 15 minutes of their time. This allows you to learn from someone whose feet are already on the ground.
Another idea is to connect with an engineer and/or product manager via LinkedIn to ask for advice. Many people in these fields are more than willing to answer your questions and provide feedback. And who knows, you may even make a connection that leads to a job offer.
No matter which career path you choose, you’re going to be fine. If you love it, stick with it. But if you don’t, consider making a change to the other. With more experience and knowledge under your belt, you’re a more qualified candidate — and that’ll help you land your dream job.
