Career Stops: When Coding is Not Enough to Be Technical in Your Next Role

I recently overheard an interesting conversation between two friends at a Manhattan coffee shop. One of them said, “I have a product interview tomorrow but I'm worried I'm not technical enough for the job.” After his friend inquired how he was going to solve that, I lowered the volume on my Discover Weekly playlist to make sure I heard his reply. “I'm going to take a coding class this weekend, learn Java, and hopefully that'll help with the technical part!”

Here's a piece of advice that shouldn't be a secret: You do not need to know how to code to be technical. Learning how to code is an extraordinary endeavor and certainly one of the first (and hardest) steps towards becoming a technical professional, but to be a technical product manager requires a deep understanding of underlying concepts that extend far beyond coding. In fact, some of the most technical people that I've come across have never compiled source code — they are just highly curious individuals who take the time to have a deep understanding of how things work. Here's the story of how I realized this during my transition from software engineering to product.

In college, I started out as an Econ major. But, after an intro to Computer Science course, I fell in love with coding and all the problem solving that came with it. I ended up majoring in computer science at Ohio Wesleyan which led to my first job in the Software Engineering Program here at Chase. I was placed on a mobile development team, writing code for the Chase Mobile® app.

After a couple of years on the job and a lot of learning, I felt that moving into product was the right next step for my broader career goals. I was excited about the responsibilities that came with managing a product as well as leaning into my entrepreneurial spirit a little more. There was an opportunity in a different product area with a different technical stack, and I was ready for the adventure.

Since I was pushing code, working on API routes and taking part in technical design discussions, I felt that I had the ‘being technical’ part of a product manager covered. After a few weeks in the product role of this new line of business, I was humbled. I did not feel technical at all! How could I not be technical after all these years of software engineering?

There were definitely advantages in coming from Software engineering. I had a strong understanding of the Software Development life cycle which helped in understanding the day-to-day of engineering and in turn made me a more empathetic partner. I was also good at helping the design team understand where we could potentially run into blockers. But, I certainly didn't get to skip the initial learning pains that all new team members go through.

This is where I realized I had the wrong definition of ‘being technical.’ Being technical is knowing the core concepts and understanding how technical systems interact with each other in the context of your individual product. It is also the ability to make informed decisions related to your product because you understand how the thing works.

There is no hack to ‘getting technical’ overnight. I had to spend a lot of time with architects and developers white boarding to really internalize the nuances of our technical environment. I made a lot of diagrams to help the team understand our tech stack so that when there was an issue, we could easily trace where it was coming from. I had to seek out colleagues who knew how our technical stack worked, and after multiple conversations, the picture began to get clear. I was also much more comfortable with unknowns, appreciating the wealth of knowledge my engineering counterparts brought to product discussions.

Once I had a strong sense of all the systems we interacted with and their respective technical trade-offs, I could apply my subject matter knowledge to drive the prioritization of our backlog and make informed decisions. I was a far more effective product manager. I also — finally — started to feel technical again.

I was left with this strong opinion — if you want to be technical, learning how to code is not necessarily the tool that will get you there. It's a great place to start, but definitely consider technical design and additional information available out there, such as engineering blogs.

Writing code is one of the best things I ever took on as I believe it to be an invaluable skill, but as a PM your demands will not be writing for-loops inside of object-oriented classes.