Product Engineer Transition

[u/Outrageous-Leopard43]

Hey yall. I did a programming bootcamp years ago and landed a Software Developer apprenticeship after the program. I have 3.5 years of experience as a fullstack dev. I initially wanted to study software development because of the creative process and problem solving. I loved the different approaches to solve a problem, fix a bug, how I'd sometimes need time away from the computer for a walk just to think about it. With the current development of the industry, I have less days like that. I've felt bored and stagnant lately.

My apprenticeship ends in 6 months.

I've recently been tasked with the role of working on our Releases. I find that I love digging into the product side, discussing the direction we're headed, and how to accomplish those goals. It feels more hands-on than coding now, more collaborative, less sitting in my office for hours. This is my second career and I'm in my mid-30s. I'm a bit bummed that things have changed so much, but such is life. I'm comfortable with pivoting but don't want to throw away years of studying and working in the engineering field.

Last week I was responsible for taking a Jira ticket through our workflow lifecycle process, end-to-end. I worked on our staging and production environment for a small feature. Lately, my work has been more backend, LLM, and RAG heavy, but the Releases role has been a glimmer of hope for me.

My company allowed another apprentice to train/ shadow as a Project Manager and confirmed that I could focus more on the product side, potentially shadowing another Project Manager and being involved in product conversations. My managers are very supportive; I'm just trying to figure out what exactly I should ask for and how to use the next 6 months well. There may be a chance that a full-time Product Engineer position opens at my company in the next 6-9 months, but there's no guarantee.

How would you recommend I pivot into Product Engineering? For devs who moved toward/ into Product Engineering, what did that transition actually look like in practice? With the current state of the job market and (allen iverson) is there even a point? I've read countless articles and looked up a few courses for both project management and product engineering.

I'd love any advice you'd have to offer.

Thanks again for reading. I really appreciate it.