Moving From Engineering To Product Management With Zaz Harris

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This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. 

I hear from a lot of engineers who want to move into product management. Typically, they like writing code, but they want to get more involved in the decision making and have a good perspective of the whole business. Sometimes they don’t like writing code and are just looking for another career path. In either case, the best way to make the jump is at their current company.

Zaz Harris is a great example of this. While she has typically had engineering job titles, she has always gotten more involved with her projects than just writing code, whether it’s contributing to UI decisions or deciding what to build. At her current job, she recently made the jump from software engineer to product manager. Let’s hear about how that happened.

What were you doing before you took your product role?

Zaz: I initially was hired as a Sr. Software Engineer about a year ago.  Up until this role, I’d always had positions that were primarily developer roles, although I’d always been fairly versatile and ended up doing product-related activities.

Why did you make the move into product?

Zaz: My supervisors recognized that there a serious problem in product about six months ago and had noticed my interest.  They essentially drafted me into the role to replace a founder that was leaving.  Doing strictly engineering all day every day with no input into product was actually a little bit excruciating.  It was a little scary to move into a non-engineering role but I had been drifting that way for a long time and figured it was worth a shot.  If nothing else, I thought there was no way I wouldn’t improve the current situation — this turned out to be true!

How is your new role different from your past roles?

Zaz: I’ve never had a strictly product-oriented role, nor have I managed the work of an entire engineering team.  I also have two direct reports (a graphic designer and customer support) and soon will have two editors and a web developer as well.  So that is certainly a change from an individual contributor, even one that is also a founder.  I’m working on a pretty large web site with a lot of traffic, which is a terrific opportunity to learn about what works and what doesn’t.

What do you wish you knew about product before you took the role?

Zaz: I guess I wish I’d had a chance to think and do more research about topics I know little about, such as marketing, analytics, and our competition.  I’ve been mostly putting out fires with regard to feature development and am slowly branching out, but I’m spread a little thin and it’s hard to make time for myself to learn and really absorb what I’m doing so I can incorporate that into decision-making.

Teresa’s concluding thoughts: I like that Zaz had let her interests be known ahead of time so that when an opening occurred, she was tapped. I also like that she jumped at the opportunity even though it was outside her comfort zone. Many people think that people who make changes like this have no fear. But more often than not, the fear is there, but the person chooses to work through it. There are always going to be a lot of unknowns. All we can do is jump in and do our best.

Like many of us in product roles, it sounds like Zaz has a lot on her plate. She’s new to the position with a lot of responsibilities. But like most of us, she’s diving in and doing the job. Good for her!

What’s keeping you from going after the job you really want? And for the experienced product managers amongst us, what advice do you have for someone like Zaz who is new to the role with a full plate?

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series.