The Product Manager Career Path is Not a Straight Line

Spoiler alert: the Product Manager career path is not linear. It’s not a ladder you climb rung by rung, nor is it a neatly paved golden road leading straight to the top. Product Management is more fluid, with countless ways to break into the field, and just as many directions you can go once you’re in it.

Take my experience, my career in Product was anything but straightforward. Like so many of my peers, I stumbled into the role by accident – no carefully planned trajectory, no guidebook to follow. And honestly, that’s what made it so exciting.

But my pathway got me thinking: I can’t be the only product person who “fell” into this role, right?

What’s absolutely fascinating to me is how much the field has evolved. Product Management has gone from a role that many people hadn’t even heard of (and honestly, most still haven’t) to being consistently ranked as one of the best jobs in the U.S.

Today, we see folk fresh out of school actively seeking out a career in Product Management. This got me thinking, what does the Product Management career path look like for them? How are they expected to climb it?

Well, it’s time to find out. Whether you’re just getting started or already charting your next move, let’s dive into how to become – and grow as – a Product Manager.

How do you get onto the Product Manager career path?

Looking longingly at a career in Product Management? Are you in a role where it feels like Product Management is the next logical step? Well, how are you going to get there?

That is honestly, still up to you. Product Management isn’t this closed-off industry where you need a certain qualification and particular experience to get into it. If you want to be a lawyer, you kind of need to go to law school. A doctor – you better be studying at a Medical school for 4 years. As for Product Management: the doors are kind of left open for you.

To understand how to get onto the Product Management career path, let’s look at how it was done in the past and compare that to how the way in looks now. 

Back in the day

If you want to become a Product Manager, my advice is don’t copy the great Product Leaders that came before. I say that because there’s not really a set route that you can copy. You see, Product Management is a relatively new role. Only in recent years have there been dedicated Product Management courses and education that can give you a qualification and help you enter this role.

Before this, people came into Product Management from loads of different backgrounds, both in terms of their education and previous career paths. The variety is staggering!

I asked my social network – which you should join by the way – about their pathway into Product Management and got so many varied replies. Although this isn’t a scientific study and is biased towards my connections, the results were still illuminating, so much so that I decided to put all the previous roles mentioned into a table:

As you can see, there are definitely some roles that appear to be more common stepping stones into Product Management than others, with Marketing roles, Software Engineering, Business Analysis, and Project Management being some of the most common.

But still, there’s an even spread between these roles, which says to me that there’s really no defined way into Product Management. Multiple roles can give you some crucial, transferable skills that can make Product Management a perfect career.

This graph doesn’t even include some of the more ‘out there’ roles that people had on their way to Product Management. Among the replies, we’ve had a Computer Scientist, a Theatre Production Manager, and even a Lifeguard.

All this is to say that if you don’t think you’re on the right path, don’t worry, because it turns out, neither were any of us. 

What to do today to get onto the Product Manager career path

As alluded to, things are a little different today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. You’ve got excellent Product Management qualifications to give you a kickstart – like the King’s College Product Management Career Accelerator course that I had a hand in creating – and loads more information to learn from.

We’ve asked some leading product pros what they recommend to someone who’s keen to get into Product Management today. Here’s their advice: 

Jason’s advice is spot on: if you’re eyeing a Product Manager role, jumping into an Individual Contributor (IC) position on a solid product team can be a great place to start. Whether you’re an Engineer, Designer, Analyst, or Copywriter, these roles give you hands-on experience with the nuts and bolts of product development, building, testing, prioritizing, and rethinking. It’s the perfect way to develop transferable skills while learning how to collaborate and tackle the messy, real-world challenges of creating great products.

He also singles out UX research as a standout prep role, and for good reason. Understanding the user or customer is central to effective Product Management, and a background in UX and UI equips you with the tools to gather, analyze, and apply insights that directly shape product decisions.

But what to do once you’ve gained this experience? Jump into a fresh PM role at a new company, or change position in your current organization? Well, most believe that the latter approach is the easiest:

It’s tough to get noticed without direct experience. By transitioning internally, you leverage existing relationships and company knowledge to make your case. Sometimes, building genuine connections with people in the industry can open doors that resumes alone can’t.

All in all, the best route into Product Management today depends entirely on where you are in your career. A person fresh out of school has different opportunities available to them than someone who’s been around the block in different roles. But whatever you do, gaining experience is crucial, no matter who you ask.

One interesting avenue of discussion is that many current PMs think a background in Business Analysis is going to support them. Heck, many don’t even think there’s much that distinguishes between the two roles, with Product Management simply being an evolution of Business Analysis.

I’m not going to go into whether I fully agree with that assessment or not, you can draw your own conclusions, but it’s clear that there is a strong connection between the role and Product Management. In fact, for many aiming to be a Product Manager, it was suggested to them that they seek out experience in Business Analysis first.

So why am I bringing this up? Well, because it highlights an important truth about Product Management: the skills you bring into the role matter just as much as the title you’ve held.

A background in Business Analysis equips you with some of the foundational tools you’ll need to succeed as a Product Manager – digging into data, understanding user needs, mapping processes, and collaborating with product teams. These are all core parts of the PM toolkit. For many, it’s a natural stepping stone.

But here’s the kicker: while Business Analysis is one path in, it’s far from the only one. The key is to focus on the transferable skills that align with Product Management.

So, whether you’re coming from a Business Analyst role or some other field entirely, don’t get hung up on the “right” path. The industry is wide open to those who can roll up their sleeves, ask the right questions, and create value for customers. 

What skills do you need to progress along the Product Manager career path?

So you don’t need a specific degree or background to break into Product Management, but you can’t waltz into the role without the right skills.

If you want to land a spot on the Product Manager career path, it’s crucial to develop attributes that align with the role’s demands. Many roles and courses can help you build these skills, but to give you a sense of where to focus, here’s a quick rundown of the core skills every aspiring Product Manager needs:

• Customer empathy: Understanding the needs, pain points, and motivations of your customers is essential. A strong sense of empathy allows you to prioritize features and solutions that truly matter, creating products people love.

• Strategic thinking: Product Managers must see the bigger picture. This means setting long-term goals, aligning your product vision with business objectives, and ensuring your team stays focused on outcomes over outputs.

• Communication skills: From pitching ideas to stakeholders to guiding cross-functional teams, clear and persuasive communication is non-negotiable. The better you are at explaining the why behind decisions, the smoother your development cycles will run.

• Data analysis: Numbers tell a story. Whether you’re evaluating user metrics, testing hypotheses, or measuring success, being able to analyze and act on data ensures your product decisions are grounded in reality.

• Prioritization: With countless ideas and finite resources, prioritization is a survival skill. Knowing how to balance user needs, business goals, and technical constraints is critical to shipping the right things at the right time.

• Collaboration: Product Managers work at the intersection of engineering, design, marketing, and sales. Being a team player who can bring diverse groups together to solve problems is key to driving success.

• Adaptability: Things rarely go as planned in Product Management. Whether it’s shifting priorities, unexpected user feedback, or changing market trends, the ability to pivot gracefully is a game-changer.

Breaking down a ‘typical’ Product Manager career path

So you’ve broken into Product Management. The Product Manager career path doesn’t just end there. There’s so much more room for you to grow.

There’s a notion that once you’re in Product Management, you have a straight, defined route to the top. Clear stepping stones you need to tread to reach the dizzying heights of Chief Product Officer. I don’t think it’s that simple.

Many people have come into Product sideways, through the back door. Who’s to say there are no more sideways and diagonal movements product professionals can make?

When looking into the Product Manager career path, you may be confronted with a simplistic structure that looks something like this:

You get your start as a Product Owner 👉
You graduate into a Product Manager 👉 
You then step into a Senior Product Manager role 👉  
Soon enough you become a Director of Product 👉
You then make the leap to Vice President of Product 👉 
Finally, you’re the top dog as a Chief Product Officer 🏆

There’s soooooo much more nuance to this. There are loads more exciting and interesting roles that you can grow into. If you’re a new Product Manager, this route can make it feel like your future is already carved out for you. But what if you don’t want to step into a senior role that trades managing products for managing people? What if you want to specialize in a certain area of Product Management? Well, the good news is, you can.

Susana Lopes discussed the dual-track career path in one of her past talks at Mind The Product 2023 and it really left a mark on me. This is a great explanation in that there is a separate pathway for those wanting to stick around the product and stay in the weeds of product development, getting their hands dirty in improving the product. You don’t have to sacrifice your growth by pursuing this path.

It’s a fascinating discussion of how the Product Manager career path can branch off into different directions. But I think it can go even deeper.

See, I’d propose that the Product Manager career path isn’t a path at all, but a tree sprouting different branches. You’ve got your core Product Management role at the base, the truck, with everything else growing out from it.

Landing a role in Product Management doesn’t have to be the apex of your career. It can be the start. Imagine yourself a seedling – you can bloom into anything you want. 

And what about the roles that came before you? The roles that led to you getting your first Product Management position? Well, those are the roots that have given you a strong foundation and the skills needed to excel in Product Management.

Here’s a visual of what this Product Manager career tree may look like. Of course, we couldn’t fit EVERY product adjacent role into this, and it doesn’t include every possible route through Product Management, but based on our previous research, it appears to be some of the typical ways people move through the PM career journey.

I know not everyone will match this, but it should help paint the picture that the route up is not linear, it’s not a straight line – it’s a mess of different disciplines and skills and viewpoints and that’s what makes the industry so interesting. 

How is the Product Manager career path set to change?

Things don’t tend to sit still for long in tech and SaaS, so don’t expect the Product Manager career path to settle into a fixed rhythm anytime soon. There are so many new roles being introduced and different ways of doing Product Management –  I think this is going to change how the Product Manager career path looks going forward. Here are some key areas where the Product Manager career path may change.

A slowdown on specialized roles

See, not even a decade ago, Product Managers were seen as a jack-of-all-trades, dipping into different specializations and offering insight where they can. But recently, we’ve seen a major shift in this. Today, companies are focused on getting specialized PMs to perform specific tasks and focus on a certain area surrounding the product.

One of the biggest growing specializations is, somewhat fittingly, Growth PM roles. This position has risen 117% since 2022, demonstrating the appetite businesses have to scale. Here, core PMs are being usurped by ones specifically focused on driving business growth.

But here’s the thing, I think after an initial boom, these specialized roles are going to die off and become absorbed into the Product Management role, becoming core responsibilities instead of specified job role focuses.

If you’re in a position where you need to show you’re influencing growth as a PM, check out our webinar on how to ‘do’ Growth Product Management 👇: 

Once again, I believe that these will become just another hat that a Product Manager needs to wear, meaning that those looking to enter Product Management will need to be pretty multifaceted. 

I’m not alone in this mindset. Other top Product leaders believe this is the next trend in the industry. 

IC track roles are going to catch up 

The IC track is still a new route to senior positions in Product Management, and because of that, there’s still a discrepancy between say a Distinguished Product Manager and a VP of Product.

This is changing, slowly and surely, with this route becoming a more viable pathway to follow, allowing more technically minded folks to continue to influence the success of their product without having to face managerial and leadership responsibilities that could leave them burned out.

Watch this space on the dual-track career path, as it’s seriously something that can take off and reshape the Product Manager career path. 

There’ll be even more PMs outside the US (and Silicon Valley)

Product Management can sometimes feel like a solely American role. That makes sense, FAANG companies were among the first to make the role trendy and pay big bucks for Product Managers. They made the role popular and most just so happened to all be headquartered in Silicon Valley, hence the still existing focus on the San Francisco Bay Area.

But things have been changing now – Product Management is undeniably global.

Yes, some companies may still require applicants for top Product Management positions to relocate to the US, but there are so many new Product Management hubs that are making the industry more diverse and more accessible than ever before, and they’re growing.

The rise of remote working – which is not going away – and the effectiveness of digital collaboration tools means we’re going to see even more international teams and more PMs from locations beyond the US. 

Product Managers can start to aim bigger

Don’t let our Product Manager career tree fool you. There are plenty of more senior positions that you can aim for beyond being a Chief Product Officer. There’s a growing trend of Product Managers spreading their influence in wider, more adjacent fields, which is going to have a big influence on where businesses in tech go.

More Product Managers are starting to land Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer roles. Plenty have also climbed the ranks to become CEOs at some major companies.

Heck, loads of Product Managers are now becoming Founders of their own companies, using their expertise to build start-ups. The success that many have had should be a good indication that those on the Product Manager career path can begin to dream a bit bigger. The skills you hone and develop as a product person are now getting valued at the highest levels of business leadership. 

You set your own path 

The Product Manager career path is as unique and varied as the people who walk it. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, no golden staircase leading to the C-suite. You can forge your own path. Whether you’ve stumbled into the field from an unexpected career or carefully planned your every move, the beauty of Product Management lies in its flexibility.

Unlike more rigid industries, the pathway to the top is less of a ladder and more of a tree – rooted in diverse skills, branching into endless opportunities, and growing in directions that suit your ambitions.

If there’s one thing a new PM should take away, it’s this: whether you’re charting your first steps on the Product Manager career path or considering your next move, remember: there’s no “right” path, only the one that aligns with your goals and interests.

So embrace the unexpected, lean into your transferable skills, and trust that the winding road ahead is exactly where you’re meant to be. In Product Management, every twist, turn, and pivot is an opportunity to grow.

And if you want to supercharge your growth and become a better Product Manager, consider using the best tools for the job. Every Product Manager needs a roadmapping tool, and the best choice is ProdPad. With ProdPad you’ll have best practices built-in, with templates and prompts to help you better define your ideas, optimize your backlog, and build products that drive business growth.

ProdPad can make you go from good to great. See what we can do yourself with a free trial – no strings attached.