Other Career Tracks

If the senior developer /architect and dev manager tracks don’t appeal to you (and assuming you don’t want to go into QA), there are still a couple of other career tracks you can pursue: Project Management and Product Management.

Project Managers, aka Technical Project Managers, aka Program Managers, are the ones who ‘drive’ projects. They create schedules, track progress, coordinate with other teams, and identify and mitigate issues and risks. Typically however they do not have any technical resources reporting to them.

The actual scope of responsibilities for the various flavors of Project Mangers varies widely between organizations. At Microsoft for instance Program Managers are quite technical and behave more like Dev managers; at other companies Project Managers may be non-technical people who have never coded a day in their lives.

Project Managers often have a difficult and thankless job. Not only do they lack direct authority over the people they need to do coordinate, but many people see Project Managers as unnecessary overhead. Still, some people thrive in a role juggling spreadsheets and Gantt charts. And if they’re fortunate, they might end up in an agile development organization where Project Managers can take a more central, albeit nontraditional, role (e.g., Scrum Masters).

Product Managers by contrast determine product requirements. They may or may not have coding experience, often coming from a creative or business background. What’s important for them is having their finger on the marketplace and being able to see things at a higher level. They are often the ‘face’ of the product or its features to the public and to top management.

Product Managers can specify what needs to be done without worrying so much about how it is to be done, though feature negotiation will still be required with Project Managers and Development Managers. So in many ways a Product Manager position is easier than a Project Manager one, and carries with it more glory and exposure with less of the accountability.

That’s not to say that Product Management is all milk and honey. Product Managers usually have to field countless questions from developers, questions they often cannot answer. And at smaller companies Product Management is often considered a niche position without a full career path like development or even Project Management positions.

Of course, it’s possible for you to move back and forth between the developer, dev manager, project manager, product manager, and even QA (gasp!) roles. This happens more often than you might think, especially at larger software companies.

So my recommendation if you have to make a career decision away from development? Choose Product Management if possible. It’s good work if you can get it.