Ask HN: How do I jump from Senior PM –> Senior Product Engineer?

Typically, one doesn't jump from "senior in specialized field that you're experienced in" to "senior in specialized field you're not experienced in".

Like, you wouldn't expect someone who's an assistant manager at McDonald's to finish their law degree and start a new job as senior partner at the law firm.

You have to start over as a junior engineer. Because you are starting over

I get that you want to put your hands in the code and get more technical, but this looks like a giant step backwards for you. If you want to get a superior handle on the code write personal projects outside of work. Never ever trust your office coworkers to determine what qualifies as high quality code when you can make those determinations more precisely from doing the same work yourself without the restrictions and politics of the office getting in your way.

What you should be looking at is senior product owner. This varies in title and degree of authority based upon the employer. As a senior product owner you are ultimately the boss whose career and value as a human is vested upon the success of a segment of the business. This means you need to have a constant awareness of product health and monitoring, user preferences, roadmap, product finances, employee/feature velocity, and more. You also need to know which subordinate managers to strangle when things go outside of plan.

Is your immediate desire:

A) A job where your title is 'Senior Product Engineer'?

B) A job where your responsibilities and activities are that of a 'Senior Product Engineer'?

C) A job where you can hone your craft over time, so that one day an impartial observer would consider you a 'Senior Product Engineer'?

D) Something else?

From your description, my guess is:

A is achievable. Many companies have a low bar and/or are willing to take chances and/or are happy to grant big titles because they don't cost anything.

B is achievable, but you haven't built the skills or experience for it. So it's probably not the ideal learning environment and would probably cause a lot of stress.

C is what I would recommend if a friend came to me with this question.

(If you're a good PM, this will save time on some aspects of your new engineering job, so you'll be in a better position than a typical junior engineer.)

> Should I target smaller companies where I can wear multiple hats?

Yep, that is probably your best bet. Find a job where you are hired for your PM skills, but allowed to write code. Now you have coding experience. Do that for a couple years, then switch to full-time coding.