How do I become a PM?
Posted Monday, March 16 2009 by The JobsBloggers
Dear JobsBlog: After working for 9+ years as a technical lead, I am now considering a change in career path and am seriously considering the Program Manager role. I work at a start-up and wear multiple hats like meeting customers, working with development teams, managing schedules, resource planning and risk analysis. I read the Zen of PM article, and I think I do some of it.
I can see it is quite possible for someone from within Microsoft to change gears from SDE or SDET roles to a PM role. Do you see that happening to someone from outside? Do you have any specific advice for me in this regard -- like to get my resume noticed, given that I am coming from a dev background?
-Pondering PM
Dear Pondering PM: Program Management isn’t a consistent discipline across the technical industry, and as Steven Sinofsky blogged, “PM is unique to Microsoft and I think it is fair to say this is a role that is often copied but never duplicated.” The good news is, when hiring from outside Microsoft, we rarely interview people who have already been PMs because, well, there just aren’t many!
Is a development background good? Yes! When I recruited for PMs, I usually looked for software engineers who had moved into roles like team lead, development/test manager or lead architect, or simply worked at really small companies and had to wear many hats, as you describe. While technical depth and scope differ based on the role and product, PMs typically have computer science, computer engineering or math degrees, just like SDEs and SDETs. (We also hire PMs directly from college, usually looking for CS/CE students with team-based leadership experience.)
Effective PMs do something we call “leading without authority.” That’s why we look for tried and true software engineers who walk the walk, talk the talk and thrive on managing the big picture as well as lots of moving parts and people. Essentially, they’re software engineers… with people skills.
My resume advice? Showcase your hands-on technical skills blended with PM-like accomplishments: managing schedules and milestones, balancing customer requirements with business realities, writing specifications, designing prototypes, etc.
Find more Program Management posts on JobsBlog.
-Gretchen
4 commentsTagged as: gretchen, working-at-msft, job-hunting, resume-building
Comments
The "Find more Program Management posts on JobsBlog" uses Kumo (rather than Live Search), which doesn't work outside Microsoft. ("Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days." [http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2213])
P.S. The "Rock the Empire" link in the previous article (http://microsoftjobsblog.com/blog/new-site-career-development/) is a relative URL i.e., it points to 'http://microsoftjobsblog.com/blog/new-site-career-development/%E2%80%9Dhttp://microsoft.com/college%E2%80%9D'.
Thanks for letting us know! Those links have been fixed :)
thank you for keep it up to date but can you make the result of search more narrow?
Hello,
I am familiar with the role of the PM at Microsoft. In fact, if I could have my choice of positions at Microsoft, I would choose the PM role. I have tremendous respect for the company, and the goal of the position: being the voice of the end user during product development.
That being said, Gretchen, I believe that you and the other recruiters are taking a very wrong approach in recruiting of Program Managers, and you are doing a disservice to the company and to the people who buy Microsoft products.
Bob Cringely, a man with thirty years in the industry, stated in this blog post (http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/microsoft-has-pms/) that "Microsoft has PMS" or Program Manager Syndrome. Cringely states that the way that Microsoft recruits PMs is directly responsible for the critique that Microsoft products are not user friendly (so evident in certain commercials made by a company in Cupertino). MS hires very technical people for a job role that is charged with speaking for the non-technical people, and it is the nature of these people who have been SDEs and SDETs before to give what bias they have towards the tech side instead of the people side of the development process.
We are warned of the dangers of group think in leadership courses and books on organizational behavior. Group think largely happens when there is not a voice of dissent, when the environment becomes so homogenized that any ideological dissonance is either actively or passively suppressed. By applying the recruiting practices you outline above, Gretchen, you and your fellow recruiters are contributing to an environment that has seen the true innovation that only comes from ideological dissent largely fall by the wayside, and has allowed those MS detractors out there to laugh all the way to the bank.
You can teach someone to code. You can teach someone algorithms. You can't teach interpersonal skills. You can't teach integrity, leadership, and determination. There was a time when the recruiters at Microsoft understood this. They recruited people from all walks of life to fill a variety of roles, both technical and non technical, because they understood the value of diversity and dissent in an organization. I guess that has fallen by the wayside.
Thank you,
A Polite Dissenter