I keep getting feedback from managers and interviewers that I am strong in product strategy and business mindset, but weak in technical skills despite my CS undergrad and 2 YOE as a software engineer. Granted I have not coded in many years but I am knowledgable enough to understand and discuss technical questions with my dev team. what should be the expected level of technical knowledge?

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What technical skills are they looking for? Are they referring to hard technical skills (like system design, architecture, etc) or soft ones (like collaborating with engineers, technical requirements definition, etc)?

And what kind of PM role were you interviewing for? Sometimes it can so happen that you might just not have the exact technical skills they need (e.g. you were a front end engineer, but they need someone with Databricks knowledge, etc)

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Op, do you work in b2b? I have got the same feedback despite working in a technical pm role for the last 5+ years. I'd say pay attention to the feedback only if it is actionable and the person it is coming from has direct impact to you feedback wise. I'd recommend leveraging your other strengths instead to gain the confidence of engineering, etc. I make sure my engineering teams know I have their back so this has helped me navigate the "not technical enough" feedback. If there is an escalation or the engineering teams are put on the spot, they pull me in to help them. If you are strong with analytics, leverage that with dashboards, insights, etc. Alternatively look for other PM roles which need more strategic thinking and move past this!

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I found that discussing your projects is not enough. If they give you some type of challenge, I’d recommend coding that out as well. It really shows dedication. That’s what I did post interview. After understanding their projects I went and coded my idea of a solution. Although completely wrong it shows dedication and technical knowledge.

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I agree. Bring more of your technical skills into the process without taking over for engineering.

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Are you strong in analytics skills? Like being able to understand how the entire business works by looking at the DB architecture, pull data from an API or DB without assistance, and manipulate a table or data frame in whatever way is necessary to find trends? Usually you can get around having less domain expertise by showing off analytical prowess

Otherwise, the only other thing I can think of is you’re missing more specific expertise in areas like distributed systems, computer vision, etc depending on the role you’re applying for. Products that are more geared towards developers, data science, or tech hardware tend to require a lot more niche expertise

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Following.

Did they say specifically what technical skills?

Get a better sense of what the gap really is and what the company really wants from you. Maybe your company needs more engineering managers or wants you to be an engineering manager. If so, find another company that needs a real product leader.

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