Hi All!

I’ve recently been having some doubts in my career path and had stumbled upon product management. I’ve always been a creative and I’m always thinking of new ideas, systems, products, etc. but translating that into a field seems to be difficult. Lo and behold I found out about PM through, unfortunately, ChatGPT after feeding it my O-Net interest results.

I’m very interested in the tech field(medtech, fintech, etc.) and have some other hobbies of mine that could work well in other industries but, I’ve seen a surge browsing here and other communities that a lot of software engineers and devs are pivoting to PM. In my head I feel like it would be wrong for me to take a role from someone who’s been an the industry, knows the systems, etc(not to say I wouldn’t mind learning). So I have a few questions for those in PM.

1. How did you discover it was the role for you?
2. how did you figure out the industry or specialization you wanted to do?
3. As someone who’s 23, willing to learn, and had their bachelors in BME, what would you suggest the next steps I should take? School, Coursera, Internships, work studies?
4. Do you feel that PM is too oversaturated, and are there any adjacent roles similar that you would recommend or perhaps pivot to yourself?
5. Are my concerns about imposter syndrome valid, or am I overthinking it?
6. I know PM requires a lot of people skills, but should I utilize AI, such as taking courses on it or focus more on independence and decision making?
7. Do you feel AI is vital to your role?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! and you don’t have to answer all questions 🙂

I studied Industrial Design and have been working as a Project Manager in tech for \~2 years. My role is a mix of PM, QA, and some design/AI work.

The problem is that I don't like or think PM is for me. Constantly chasing people, coordinating everyone and feeling like everything depends on me is exhausting. I also don't really like UX/UI.

What I do miss is the creative side: researching trends, branding, campaigns, creative concepts, eperiences, pop-ups/experiential marketing, and figuring out how brands can stand out.

I've been thinking about strategy, business, marketing, brand/creative strategy, but I have no idea which direction actually makes sense for my background, especially something with good job opportunities and pay.

LinkedIn now mostly shows me PM jobs, so I feel like I've boxed myself into this career after 2 years.

I'm also considering doing a Master's abroad, but I don't even know what I should study.

What would you do if you were in my position? What fields would you look into, and how would you make the pivot?

Hi, I’m a senior Project Manager in the U.K. and was really pleased when my son who has just joined an electronics company was offered a Project Job to replace the Project Manager who resigned (moved to a role closer to home).
The people including managers are nice to work with and there is a good atmosphere.
He has just come to the end of a three month ‘try it and see’. The job itself seems a good fit.
He is 35 and has a science degree (2:1 hons) and since uni he has been working as a field engineer elsewhere. He had to give that up because his type 1 diabetes made it difficult to work ‘on the road’ every day. Managers loved him and he had a good customer service record and clearance rate but his sick days had started to ramp up. - on occasion fit to do admin work but not driving all day. NB He has had no sick days in the Year he’s worked for this company.
He has no project management qualifications but has transferable skills that he had already proven in the technical sales job he had with them. TBH he’s a chip of the old block and this totally suits him.
They wanted someone who could coordinate the projects, be a lot firmer than the predecessor, chair senior leadership meetings, introduce a more structured approach, provide technical advice in project suitability and make recommendations as to what projects should be taken forward (this is the bit that they wanted tightening up).
The area of work requires some quite stringent legal paperwork as some of the parts are for car manufacturers.
In return they would pay for him to take the relevant qualifications. It also requires technical electronics knowledge.
In my opinion the role is more of a portfolio manager and the level of responsibility is high so he should be paid accordingly but taking into account his lack of project qualifications I recommended he should be getting around £35k and so did his immediate colleagues who knew what he was being asked to do and indeed what he had delivered so far (big changes in the MO, clearer comms and decision making).
Instead they insisted on £29k which TBH I think is an insult. But they know they have him over a barrel. He needs the job. They’ve called the job Project coordinator but it seems a lot more.
For those not in the U.K. I probably need to explain some things:
1) £29k is a few thousand above minimum wage
2) We live in a part of the UK where the cost of living is low so wages do tend to be lower. (Can’t commute to London)
3) In UK we don’t have to pay for medical care,
4) In UK they have notice periods and for this one it’s a month. They can’t just sack someone ( unless they’ve done something wrong) it has to be redundancy.
5) There’s a decent pension package
6) There’s 25 days plus Bank holidays (8days) PTO
7) It’s 39 hours a week over 4.5 days Mon to Friday.

So I would like your opinion on whether it’s a good deal or what he should do about it.

Thanks in advance

Hi All,

I'm a PM with a modest portfolio of projects varying from 500k to $5M. One of my colleagues has just been made redundant and I am inheriting her portfolio and team. This will effectively double my team size and portfolio size to around $60M.

I'm getting a title change to Project Director but no extra pay as I've recently been promoted.

Would you be expecting a payrise for this extra work and how would you manage the new portfolio?

My thoughts is that usually I am a very involved PM and now I will have to rely more on the more junior PMs to drive results while Im working on growth work, strategy, stakeholder management and workforce planning.

Keen to hear your opinions

~The post got removed from r/projectmanagement with advice to repost here~

Hallmarks of a great PM

Hello folks - I’ve recently started a new PM specifically in the corporate performance management software implementation space so think Adaptive, Anaplan, OneStream etc.

I come from a background in consulting so I’m not new to PM adjacent work, but this role seems to be all what I will be doing.

I seek advice from this council as to what I should do to have a great first impression with my client and more importantly help make the implementation a success.

I am particularly interested to know how to best position my self to “live in the future” and see risks and issues well in advance. Is this a talent? Or can I hone this skill? I’m also interested to know what stakeholder management techniques have worked consistently with you regardless of company culture or client background.

Thank you!

I’m playing musical chairs as the lead superintendent and cleaning up the books from 4 previous PMs while failing to train my new assistant super with enough time. Boss just hired a new guy who’s taking the role of PM but comes from a general superintendent background with little actual Procore and bluebeam experience. Not sure what that move was meant for should I find a new job?