Upcoming Product Management Interview

[zero]

Hello - next week I'm interviewing for a Product Management role at a large multi-national tech company. The position falls under the Dir of Engineering and I'll be interviewing with a Principal Engineer. I'm pretty nervous about this because, while I have a very technical background, I've been doing Product Management for the past 8 years and also was never a developer, I was in infrastructure, system design, cloud, etc. I appreciate any advice or insights into what I should prepare for. Many thanks!

 

[wallinbl]

You’re interviewing for a role you’ve been doing for eight years. Have you interfaced with engineering during that time? I’d assume so. Think about how that has gone, what worked, what didn’t, etc. They’re unlikely to expect you to be an engineer; they’re likely to expect you to be able to work with them.

 

[zero]

Thanks, that's what I assumed as well. I'm just a little nervous since all the PMs in this group are managed by the Eng Director.

 

[Semi On]

It wouldn't be bad to brush up on the technical basics. If you're interviewing with a principle engineer right out of the gate, that suggests to me that the company has a very technical expectation of their PdMs. Maybe the principle engineer is primarily there to see if you are someone they can work with personally, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of quizzing.

 

[Korov]

I sit on a lot of the technical interviews for developers at my company, and every once in a while I'll be asked to do a technical interview for a non-technical role. Product owner, manager, scrum master, etc. Usually when they're going to be on a team where other engineers are the customer.

In all cases it is about making sure you don't completely give up as soon as the discussion turns in that direction, rather than testing actual knowledge.

 

[zero]

The interviews went great and were not at all technical, was a bit of a surprise. Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[continuum]

Great to hear!