From Developer to Product Manager
After 4 years of career in IT companies as Fullstack Developer, as Scrum Master, and now as Product Manager, I can say that I have worked in 3 important positions in the Tech team.
At the beginning, I never thought I would have ended in this sector: I have an engineering degree in Chemistry and in Project Management. My goal was to work in the cosmetic or pharmaceutical sectors to practice fine chemistry. However, there were so many people willing to work in these industries and there were so few places that I decided to find another track.
Self-taught (or almost)
After a first internship in a Service Provider company (that looked like any other Service Provider company in France, but that will be the subject of another story), I decided to learn by myself programming on MOOC websites such as OpenClassrooms, Codecademy…
It was like a revelation to me: coding is an art, and companies needed it badly because of the rise of software. I decided to apply to a school for a degree in software.
“But Thomas, why did you apply to a school if you could learn by yourself with online resources?”
The answer is simple: In France, the culture of the diploma was still very present at that time. This has started to change in the last few years with schools that allow students to quickly gain competence in 2–3 years (or even less) and apply for a job quickly after.
To give you an idea: for 1 student getting a degree, there were 4 places on the market in Cybersecurity.
And that’s how I started my career in IT by working an AdTech company as a fullstack developer. It was in 2016 and developers were already on the roll.
To clarify if you were wondering how I got hired directly as fullstack: several developers coming out of school declared themselves fullstack. One of the reasons was maybe because the popularity of Node.js gave the feeling of being able to manage a codebase from the database to the interface with a single language.
In fact (and I still think that today) it takes several years to a developer to be fullstack: you have to have worked on projects involving front, back, and both at the same time to really start to understand how it works.
Expand my field of competence
Managing microservices was a great experience, but I wanted to learn more. And by more, I mean “Interfaces”. I was reading so many articles about UI/UX design, new JS Front frameworks, and Web design trends.
That’s why I decided to leave this company for another one that would allow me to work on both sides (spoiler alert: I ended in working mostly on Front-end, and almost not on Back-end).
2 years in a Web Analytics company. These 2 years have been quite amazing from my point of view:
- Many awesome developers that helped to step up in technical and teamwork skills,
- I was given the chance to become a Scrum Master (and I loved it),
- I organized a hackathon for a company of 200+ people (maybe the most amazing experience I can tell)
But it didn’t sound right
Something was starting to feel odd. Something was missing. I was starting to become better and better, almost being able to be eligible for promotion in the Tech team, but it was not what I wanted:
- I was asking more and more questions to the Business and to the Product teams to understand why we were developing this feature, or that one?
- I was spending more time with the UI/UX team to improve the overall design of our application
- I wanted to meet customers, to understand what they were thinking of our last features, and what we could improve from their point of view
And it came out as an obvious choice: I had to join the Product team.
- They are polyvalent in terms of skills,
- They communicate with almost every other team in the company,
- They find a compromise between technical complexity and business needs
Unfortunately, there was no vacancy in the team Product, and it was not planned to open new positions.
On my side, I couldn’t see myself staying in the same place for the next 2 years at the same job.
I decided to leave the company to pivot in my career.
Difficult beginnings…
Let’s be honest: the first interviews I had were awful.
- I was clumsy in my answers
- I didn’t really have any experience as a Product Owner
- I had a hard time convincing them (despite all my good will)
I started to ask my former colleagues who were working as Product Managers/Owners what I could do to improve, and how I could convince companies to hire me in spite of my inexperience.
One of them recommended a book to me: “Inspired, How To Create Products Customers Love”, by Marty Cagan.
This book helped me. A lot.
If I have to recommend only one book for someone who wants to become a Product Manager, it would be this one.
…but determination pays off
With this new knowledge, and some recommendations from former colleagues, I managed to get my first position as Product Manager in a E-Hailing and Delivery logistics company. They were looking for a Junior PM with Technical skills to build an API and build technical documentation for tech-friendly customers.
Et voilà! My career in Product was launched.
Today
If at the beginning I relied a lot on my technical skills to gain credibility with the teams, I have learned to develop other crucial skills for a PM over the last 2 years.
- Data analysis
- User research
- Business understanding
- Internal & External communication
- Onboarding of new customers
Even though no one is immune to the impostor syndrome, I’m proud of my journey, and I hope it inspires others to think outside the box if you feel a different path beckons.
