What options do you have when you want to leave product management?

Product & Design
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#1

WHY DO SOME WANT TO LEAVE PM?

Those who “leave” product management, in my experience, tend to pursue one of the following careers:

  1. Return to or enter entrepreneurship, assembling a team of co-founders to launch a new venture.
  2. Advance to executive positions resembling general management. (COO, CPO, and CEO)
  3. Work in venture capital, or 4. Work in consulting (independent or with a firm)
    As some rightly point out, you don’t leave product management. The discipline is simply transferred to other roles that benefit from a product manager who understands the business, experiences, and technology.

HOW CAN THE CAREER IN PM PAN OUT?
Product management has one of the most contradictory career paths. One of the reasons for this, in my opinion, is that the impact on the competency curve for engineering vs. product management looks like this :

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IMPLICATIONS
The implication of this in terms of alternative career paths is that if you are good, there are numerous paths you could take and use your PM skills to excel in. (Start your own small business, join the C-level suite of the next big startup, become an engineer, a technical salesperson, a solution specialist, a marketeer, and so on.)

WHAT IF SOMEONE’S NOT ENJOYING THE PROCESS?
However, if you are ineffective, it is best to EXIT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and develop alternative skills.