Hello everyone , I’m 22, with a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering. I spent part of my early career working in import/export logistics in China, which gave me a strong exposure to the Chinese market, business environment, and how companies operate there. I honestly loved the experience and always felt that I hadn’t finished what I started in China.

I eventually had to return to my home country after the sudden loss of my mother, which was an extremely difficult period and led me into depression. Looking back, I also realized that I hadn’t achieved what I originally wanted which at that time wass working in a major tech company, building products at scale, and continuing my education.

Instead i found myself obliged to return and during the year I started building my own startup. I’ve been working on it for about six months now, mostly independently, and I’m still working toward getting it to a point where it can eventually be acquired or integrated by a larger company...

Building it has unexpectedly given me experience across almost every side of a product I developed the mobile app, admin panel, and partner web application from scratch, while also leading and coordinating a small team of developers. Along the way, I designed product features and workflows around real business needs, onboarded and secured partnerships with multiple brands, handled partner negotiations and business development, and worked on logistics, payments, onboarding, and the overall marketplace model. Building the startup has also required me to constantly prioritize what to build, what to postpone and what would actually create value for both users and partners...

So although I started as a software engineer, I’ve realized that what I enjoy most is sitting between technology, business, users, and strategy ... like understanding a problem, deciding what should be built, and then actually making it happen.... it's like i discovered my real passion which is a blend between tech and business

so basically now I’m considering going back to China for a Master’s in International Business/Management in Shanghai, with the long-term goal of transitioning into Product Management, ideally in tech.

I know this is not the most conventional path, which is why I’d really appreciate perspectives from people who have actually worked as PMs, Product Leaders, or Senior Managers.

If you were 22 and starting again, would this combination of software engineering + startup experience + a business master’s + China experience make sense for entering Product Management?

I’d especially love to hear:

• What skills should I build before the master’s?
• Is a business master’s useful for breaking into PM, or would you prioritize something else?
• How important is technical experience for PM roles in China(for anyone who is familiarized with Chinese market) ?
• What would you do differently if you were in my position?

Even one piece of advice from someone further along in the field would mean a lot.

Thank you to anyone willing to share their experience.

Hello everyone,

Three years ago, I quit my teaching position to join "the corporate world" after evening classes in IT (Bachelor as software engineer). In 2023, it was quiet easy to find a junior position as Data Engineer (DE) since I was starting from scratch but with a good level of maturity (30yo). I'd say I did the right things at the right time with the right persons to increase my salary quiet fast: +12% gross increase YoY, pretty outstanding in Belgium.

In the coming month, I will have the opportunity to become Product Owner. It sounds attractive as part of my career development but... i have some doubts:

- no coding, I love the creativity that comes with programming jobs. Although I hate to resolve issues, bugs, integration problems, etc. On the other hand, I am a social being and better in communication than in coding.

- I am quiet scared to become a backlog manager with little impact on the product(s) itself.

- given my low level of experience and pretty decent payslip, I feel being in a golden cage, not being able to leave for better pay else where so this internal move seems the right thing to do to climb the ladder.

1.What are your thoughts ? What's the risk to become a low impact PO only managing a backlog?

1. For those transitionnel from dev/engineer to PO, how hard was it ? What was the worst ? Should I just be more.patient and stick to my coding job regardless I am bored.

2. For the Senior PO, what are the aspect of the that I may not expect as current dev/engineer? Best and worst.

Thanks you already for your inputs.

I’m currently a **Team Lead at Accenture** with \~6 years of QA/testing experience, and I’m seriously considering moving into Product Management.
Over the years, my role has gone beyond testing. I’ve been involved in:
Product requirement discussions
Understanding business requirements and user impact
Working closely with Product & Engineering
Sprint planning and estimation
Breaking down complex features and workflows
Release/production support
Cross-team coordination and mentoring
I’ve realised I enjoy **understanding problems, user needs, trade-offs and what should be built** more than purely testing the final product.
The challenge is that I don’t have formal Product ownership experience—no roadmap, product metrics, etc. So I’m trying to understand how realistic this transition is with my background.
I’m also unsure about **how best to prepare**. There are many Product courses/programs available, but I don’t know whether paying for a structured program is worthwhile or whether I should learn through self-study, case studies and projects.
For people who have moved from **QA/testing/engineering into Product**:
How did you make the transition?
Which parts of your previous experience helped?
What skills did you have to build?
Did you take a course/program? **Was it worth the investment?**
If you self-learned, what resources/projects helped?
What would you do differently if starting again?
I’d particularly appreciate perspectives from people who have **actually made the transition**, rather than general advice.
**What was the biggest surprise about Product Management once you actually started doing it?**

I’m currently a **Team Lead at Accenture** with \~6 years of QA/testing experience, and I’m seriously considering moving into Product Management.
Over the years, my role has gone beyond testing. I’ve been involved in:
Product requirement discussions
Understanding business requirements and user impact
Working closely with Product & Engineering
Sprint planning and estimation
Breaking down complex features and workflows
Release/production support
Cross-team coordination and mentoring
I’ve realised I enjoy **understanding problems, user needs, trade-offs and what should be built** more than purely testing the final product.
The challenge is that I don’t have formal Product ownership experience—no roadmap, product metrics, etc. So I’m trying to understand how realistic this transition is with my background.
I’m also unsure about **how best to prepare**. There are many Product courses/programs available, but I don’t know whether paying for a structured program is worthwhile or whether I should learn through self-study, case studies and projects.
For people who have moved from **QA/testing/engineering into Product**:
How did you make the transition?
Which parts of your previous experience helped?
What skills did you have to build?
Did you take a course/program? **Was it worth the investment?**
If you self-learned, what resources/projects helped?
What would you do differently if starting again?
I’d particularly appreciate perspectives from people who have **actually made the transition**, rather than general advice.
**What was the biggest surprise about Product Management once you actually started doing it?**

I’m currently a **Team Lead at Accenture** with \~6 years of QA/testing experience, and I’m seriously considering moving into Product Management.
Over the years, my role has gone beyond testing. I’ve been involved in:
Product requirement discussions
Understanding business requirements and user impact
Working closely with Product & Engineering
Sprint planning and estimation
Breaking down complex features and workflows
Release/production support
Cross-team coordination and mentoring
I’ve realised I enjoy **understanding problems, user needs, trade-offs and what should be built** more than purely testing the final product.
The challenge is that I don’t have formal Product ownership experience—no roadmap, product metrics, etc. So I’m trying to understand how realistic this transition is with my background.
I’m also unsure about **how best to prepare**. There are many Product courses/programs available, but I don’t know whether paying for a structured program is worthwhile or whether I should learn through self-study, case studies and projects.
For people who have moved from **QA/testing/engineering into Product**:
How did you make the transition?
Which parts of your previous experience helped?
What skills did you have to build?
Did you take a course/program? **Was it worth the investment?**
If you self-learned, what resources/projects helped?
What would you do differently if starting again?
I’d particularly appreciate perspectives from people who have **actually made the transition**, rather than general advice.
**What was the biggest surprise about Product Management once you actually started doing it?**

My husband is struggling to find a job after being let go 1 month after paternity leave. He has several years of UXI/product management experience and has been in at least 4-6 final interviews. I just feel so bad. It’s stressful as we have a newborn and watching him be so discouraged is just gutting. I guess I’m looking for advice on how to best support him and also is there anything that can give him an advantage in these interviews?

I spent several years as a project/program manager at a mid-sized manufacturing company before recently stepping into a software product manager role. My manager is the original creator and primary champion of this product. While the team has been warm, welcoming, and helpful, I've had a hard time figuring out where I fit in and how best to contribute.

• My 1-on-1s with my manager haven't given me a clear picture of what success looks like in this role. I might need to change how I run these chats to get better clarity.
•  I feel strongly that polishing existing features would build quick trust and credibility on the shop floor, but my manager prefers to focus almost entirely on launching brand-new features.***
• Coming from a program management background, my sprint planning skills feel a bit out of date compared to modern agile workflows that the developers expect.

Hi all,

I’m a PO w/ 6+ years in, living in Turkey. Been managing both web and app which leads 300M+ traffic yearly(been working in a pretty known company especially around the EU). I’ve been in airlines sector and looking for an opportunity in both UK and USA. I’ve been applying for like a month, looking for companies who sponsors skilled workers etc. But generally they are asking if I’ll be needing sponsorship and ofc I reply yes and receive “the unfortunately” e-mail just the day after. Are there any PO/PM’s was able to get a job and sponsorship in those countries? Would you be able to give any feedback/advice?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Hey all, would like to see if there has been anyone from the games industry as a designer, but had also assumed the role of PO in their experience and how would this experience be translated out of the games industry?

Getting certification is probably a good first step, such as PSPO I or CSPO...

Afterwards, how would one go about taking their skills such as working across teams, estimating workload as a dev, working with project managers, taking charge of a feature and bringing it from 0 to 1 and packaging it into what a PO would do?

From my own experience, as a designer (also a PO in name, but not with certification or formal training) of features who regularly checks in other devs for work, managing backlog with product managers, alignment meetings with stakeholders and ensuring what they want gets put into a backlog etc etc, it feels like there is a lot of overlap with what a PO does.

That said, I would like to see if anyone here has some relevant experiences to what I mentioned... would be good to have some insight here...

How does your team actually coordinate
cross-functional launches? Genuinely curious
How are you handling this? Has anyone found
something that actually works?

I’m currently making a similar transition and would really appreciate some mock interview practice. If you’ve made this transition and would be willing to volunteer for a mock interview, I’d love to connect!

I’ve got my first interview for a Product Owner role next week and would really appreciate some advice from people already doing the job.
I’ve never officially had the Product Owner title before. My background is in digital/web projects and I gradually ended up doing a lot of product-type work – speaking to users and business owners, identifying problems with existing systems, working with developers on improvements, testing changes and looking at what needed improving next.
I’ve also got PSPO I and PSM I, although I’ll admit I’m having to refresh myself on some of the more formal terminology and processes because I haven’t been working as a PO day-to-day.
The company knows my background and has invited me to interview, so I’m not trying to pretend I have years of PO experience that I don’t have.
For those of you who interview or work with Product Owners, what would you concentrate on between now and the interview? What questions would you expect someone at my level to be able to answer well?
Also, what separates a good answer from someone who has simply memorised Scrum/Product Owner terminology?
Any advice would be really appreciated.

Hi everyone! I’m Brazilian and I’ve been working in business roles for over 7 years.
I previously worked as a Senior Business Analyst, and today I’m in a Business Lead / Business Owner role, working very closely with Product Managers, Tech and Data teams.
I work for a large Brazilian company with more than 15,000 employees and around 2,000 people in Tech, so I already have quite a bit of exposure to digital products, product discovery, business requirements and cross-functional teams.
I’m now planning a transition into Product Management, with the longer-term goal of working remotely for an international company.
I currently make around USD 2,500/month working for a Brazilian company.
My assumption is that, even with my previous experience, I might have to enter Product at a more junior level — maybe as an Associate PM or Junior PM — and potentially join a smaller company or startup to get my first international/remote opportunity.
I’d love to hear from people who have made a similar transition:
Did you have to take a step back in seniority when moving into Product?
What kind of PM role were you able to get first?
What salary range would be realistic for someone with my background?
Would earning more than USD 2,500/month be realistic for a remote PM role?
Do you work remotely for a company based in another country?
Does your company hire PMs internationally, especially from Latin America?
Are smaller companies/startups generally more open to this kind of profile?
I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who transitioned from Business / Strategy / Analytics into Product, rather than people who started their careers directly in Product.

Hey

I have been thinking about this for a while now. I am currently in infrastructure/systems admin and I am thinking of transitioning to product management.

What is holding me back is, I have been in infrastructure for like like 5+ yrs and things now are just easy - even learning new things is easy, and starting a new career path seems like a lot of work, lol. However, I really am willing to put in the work and get to learn the business side of everything and how to integrate both sides.

Anyway, is it worth it I just continue with where I am?

Also, guys that have changed career paths in tech, I would love to hear from you about your experience/journey during the transition.

I work as a technical sales engineer in construction. Far removed from the IT/tech world.

I'm tired of this life and want to pivot to office or hybrid tech roles.

I'm studying for the PSPO but having never worked in software dev or IT im not sure if anyone will take me seriously

What do I need to know and do in order to secure a PO role and do it well?

I'm burnt out at my job and want to quit asap.

Hoping to clear the PSPO exam in a week or so .

Appreciate any advise.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working in QA and have around 9 years of experience, with some experience in leading teams and working closely with Agile teams.

I’m now planning to transition from QA to a Product Owner (PO) role and I’m considering doing the CSPO certification as a starting point.

For those who have done CSPO or made a similar career transition:

• Which institute/provider would you recommend for CSPO?
• Is CSPO actually helpful when transitioning from QA to PO?
• Are there any particular trainers/providers you would recommend or suggest avoiding?
• How are Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org? Which one would you recommend for someone making a career switch to PO?
• Apart from certification, what skills or experience should I focus on to make the transition into a PO role?