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This is a stupid use of averages. PMs come in a little senior to rank and file programmers. That doesn't mean that a PM of ten years experience makes more tha
by aetherson 8y ago
This is a stupid use of averages.
PMs come in a little senior to rank and file programmers. That doesn't mean that a PM of ten years experience makes more than a programmer of ten years.
- sparuchuri 8y agoThis. Compounded by the fact that most companies don't hire PMs until they're more mature (aka more able to pay higher compensations), the methodology is pretty broken.
- amyjess 8y agoOne thing I've noticed is that companies generally have fewer PMs than software engineers. A company might have a whole team of engineers but only one PM, and the PM typically has a title like "Director of Product Management". So it gives the impression that product manager is a director-level position. But eventually as the company grows, they'll eventually hire more PMs who report to the Director of Product Management the same way the software engineers report to the Director of Software Engineering.
- pmiller2 8y agoI think this has some merit. I’ve seen ratios from 3:1 to 10:1 engineers to PMs at companies I’ve been at. I could imagine the ratio going even higher. Edit: this does raise the question, though: where do product managers come from? What does the career path of a PM look like, including what happens before they become PMs?
- NearAP 8y ago1) Straight from Business Schools - Folks who go into technology tend to become PMs after their MBAs 2) Internal transfers - Software Engineers switch to PM 3) Management/Technology Consultant -> PM: Folks switch from consulting (where they are implementing products designed by vendors) to becoming PMs in the vendor companies.
- doublescoop 8y agoThe internal transfers is much broader than just SWE to PM, as well. UX designers, technical writers, QA testers, etc. Anyone working on a dev team might start picking up PM responsibilities and make that transition at some point.
- ryandrake 8y ago(was a product manager, now a project manager but could move back to my old role pretty easily) I came over to the dark side from software development. Was tired of implementing other people’s bad ideas and convinced product leadership at my company that I could be an idea guy myself (along with all the other footwork and juggling you need to do as a PM). So it was an internal transfer. I think the good PMs have strong hands-on “actual development” backgrounds. I realize this is a self-serving opinion, too.
- shostack 8y agoWhat made you then decide to switch to project management?
- ryandrake 8y agoAn opportunity came up and I thought I’d try it. The jury is still out but I think the role fits me better—project management seems to be more execution oriented than creative idea-generating. I’m also a big believer of being a generalist, so any opportunity to wear a new hat is welcome!
- opportune 8y agoIt totally depends on what problems you’re trying to solve. Engineering managers often end up performing many duties of a PM, and in smaller companies the only PMs you may need are the founders/executives Most PMs I know are former software engineers (or if hired as PMs out of school, studied computer science) with good people skills and high level knowledge of what they help coordinate. I would hate to work with an MBA-type PM who couldn’t appreciate technical problems and solutions
- selfselfself 8y agoAgree, I'm a PM at a top software/internet company and engineers with half of my experience make greater package... Amazon is a mixed bag but FB, Linkedin (prior to acuisition), Google, Netflix all skew towards SWEs making higher packages when experience & performance are comparable
- alistairSH 8y agoYeah, I wondered about that. The PMs with whom I work all have 15+ years experience in the business. And for most of them, "the business" is our specific domain area, not just "software". I would expect their salaries to be in the same ballpark as a senior engineer or line manager.
- alistairSH 8y agoAlso, the senior PMs all straddle the line between sales, consulting/services, and R&D. They tend to spend a lot of time in the company booth at conferences, dealing with client C-levels one-on-one, and working with our sales to team to ensure R&D is building stuff that will generate revenue. Their day-to-day interaction is with VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE mores than with us plebes. There shouldn't be any surprise that these are highly compensated positions.
- naravara 8y agoWell, it's the challenge of finding one person who can talk sales/marketing language to executives as easily as they can talk with their technical teams all while being highly organized and capable of managing a team. They don't need to be masters at any one of those things (aside from organization and management), but they need to be well above average at all of them, which is rare nexus of talents to find. Also, experience and skills like that are usually earned through entry-level work in other fields. Most of the good PMs I work with came up through other career paths (like non-profits, academia, print or tv production, paralegals, etc.) that are typically not so well compensated. They make lateral moves into product management for financial reasons, and they top out quickly. The highest paid PMs I know were mostly just former engineers themselves.
- jimbokun 8y agoIf anything, I'm surprised the salaries aren't higher than what's reported in the article.
- alistairSH 8y ago$133,000 is baller money anyplace but SV and the other high-cost cities. Also, the article is discussing salaries - I can't say for sure, but I'd bet PMs frequently have significant bonus eligibility, so that $133k could easily be $150k+ in actual annual income. And the numbers in the article appear to be national, not limited to SV (despite the headline)... "...31,146 interview requests from 1,848 companies made through Hired’s platform..." "...Analyses of H1B work visas and Glassdoor data from Google, Facebook..."
- dmode 8y agoExactly. An engineer with 10 years experience, will usually be an EM who probably earns more or equal to a PM
- denzil_correa 8y agoHence, you look at distributions - not averages.
- rajacombinator 8y agoIndeed PMs are actually generally undercompensated relative to their importance to a company.
- joker3 8y agoFrom the article: "The salary advantage for product managers has only grown, says Hired’s data scientist Jessica Kirkpatrick. 'We see that software engineers have always been paid less than product managers, but that the pay gap has widened over the past year,' she wrote by email. The trend holds after accounting for experience. Software engineers, on average, are paid about 10% less than product managers in their first year as well as after six or more years of experience." So it's not just a matter of PMs being more experienced.
- xxpor 8y agoI wonder how experience is corrected for. Someone who comes in here as a PM usually has previous job experience and an MBA. So someone who has been a PM for a year != SDE for one year.
- sokoloff 8y agoWhat is the typical overall experience of a product manager in their first year vs the overall experience of a software engineer in their first year? No one is getting a product manager title at 21 right out of college. Lots of people are getting SWE titles at 21 right out of college.
- hyperrail 8y agoMicrosoft hires program managers (what other tech firms call product managers) straight out of college. Almost all of the PM-I employees I met at Microsoft were college hires with CS degrees who had taken few or no business or marketing classes.
- killerdhmo 8y agoI was a PM straight out of college and know many PMs straight out college. Both at the big companies like Google and smaller companies.
- tristor 8y agoThat's a fair point. I make less as a PM than I did when I was an Engineer, but I had 13 years of engineering experience before I transitioned. All of the new PMs I've worked with have a minimum of 5 years of experience in some other related role and most have a related degree.
- autokad 8y agoit doesn't mean it, but there is evidence to it being true. According to sallaries on glass door, in sanfrancisco with 10-14 years exp: Product Manager: 145k$ Web Developer: 110k$ Software Engineer: 135k$
- huac 8y ago135k is almost what many new grad software engineers make now, before considering stock. those numbers look very wrong
- aetherson 8y agoGlass door is slippery. Job titles can be really specific. But obviously it is not the case that a software engineer with 10+ years of experience, in San Francisco, makes $135k.