The skills that one would develop as an engineering role are very different from the skills needed for a product management role. One should be able to think about the challenges and tradeoffs of different solutions for one’s work. They should also be able to understand market needs of their customers and how they will react to the new product in order to be successful. Finally, they must maintain a deep understanding of what technology is capable of achieving in order to lead future development efforts.
Product management, as a profession, is an amalgamation of many skills and disciplines. It can be an intimidating learning curve for someone who has been in the engineering world for their whole career. However, product managers are always learning and adapting to the changing needs of a company. That’s why it is important to use those transferable skills from the engineering role to your new product management role.
The key to this transition is to be flexible and adaptable. Engineers are usually not good at communicating with other people, which can make it hard for them to understand a user’s needs. This requires an engineer to be able to speak the language of marketing, product management, or design and also be able to think about the usability of a product.
