Product Management is better than Software Engineering

I don’t like coding. That’s taken a long time for me to realize.

I wrote this mostly to help myself clarify where I stand in terms of a career path in the short term. Software engineering has been my long standing foundation, but what might other opportunities be?

When I first heard of the product management roles my freshman year of college, I just brushed it off as something that people who didn’t have the chops to deal with the tough problems ended up doing. Look to the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page… you name it! They are/were all engineers! The real leaders of the technology change are the best of the best computer science students, engineers, programmers. Why would I want to be anything less than that?

From high school and definitely still today, I identify as a math, physical sciences, technical sort of person — generally shying away from the realm of the humanities and anything too endlessly subjective. Walking from one hackathon to the next hackathon, and one software engineering internship to another, I’ve fully engaged with doing the nitty gritty. I loved simply taking on the steps of what I thought taking an idea and bringing it to fruition looked like. Writing code.

However, some time along the way, I realized that what I loved most, and the questions I found most interesting, sounded less like:

“What’s the best Node.js package for managing async calls?”

or

“How can I abstract out this particular shared functionality that is unnecessarily half-heartedly copy and pasted with some variable name changes?”

and a lot more like:

“How can I provide an interface to this chat experience so that people will more easily be willing to be vulnerable in sharing personal experiences?”

and

“How can I best provide an onboarding process to this app that cultivates habitual usage? How can I teach people that this is something they need?!”

I don’t like coding. I don’t like coding, but what I love is creating. I love imagining what is possible. I love spinning fantasies into reality.

That’s why I’ve loved getting to know computer science and programming. It’s the most versatile and wide reaching toolkit in the world. It’s really my palette for me to paint my vision of the world.

So where have my thoughts lead me now?

I think the critical difference I’ve realized about the greats that we imagine as leading the technology world is that they’re not just tremendous engineers. Not only are they engineers, but they’re also pragmatists, working within the limitations of the world around them. They’re evangelists, believing and sharing a vision that they have of what is ahead.

They’re larger than the labels of “Engineer”, “Product Manager”, “Architect”, “Designer”, “technical person”, “people person”, “humanities major”, “STEM major”, etc. that we might give them. Only with a willingness to engage with all the mediums of the world is something truly revolutionary brought to life.

I am working to identify where in that spectrum I best belong. This doesn’t mean that I am sacrificing the background I’ve already cultivated , but rather supplementing that avidness for technicality with an enthusiasm for people, society, perception, psychology, history — an open mindedness that will allow me to reach pieces of the canvas my own arms and legs can’t reach themselves.

For people who like to ask questions like I do, for people who love engaging with their peers like I do, for people who are wondering like I am:

Is product management better than software engineering?

I’ve got to try it to find out.

I’m going on a journey to test my hypothesis that my skillset can create more value for myself and for the world in a role other than software engineering. I’m applying to the top APM intern programs this current summer internship cycle. If I don’t get into one for the summer, I already have some wonderful matches that I’m extremely grateful for in the software engineering realm that I think will lead me towards getting a better understanding of product management at top engineering organizations and the skillset needed to help create and build a better tomorrow. Follow me to keep up with my adventure!