Studied CS initially, worked as a freelancer, then a few developer positions, then CTO at a small (30 employees) enterprise SaaS company. Later on I took a head of product position at a larger (400), also enterprise SaaS company.
As a freelancer you usually have a lot of discretion in what you build so you develop a sensitivity about cost/benefit tradeoffs and quality of deliverables. These are essential for the PM role. In larger organizations, roles tend to become more specialized and therefore keeping a broad perspective is very important.
In my experience, the background in engineering has made it easy to gain credibility with technical people. I have seen the same sentiment in some of the other comments and it's hard to overstate it.
My key base skill is speaking multiple languages: the engineering language, the design language, the people language and the business language. That can be applied to many things, PM being one of them. If you are strictly an engineer, gain experience and exposure to other things.
As a freelancer you usually have a lot of discretion in what you build so you develop a sensitivity about cost/benefit tradeoffs and quality of deliverables. These are essential for the PM role. In larger organizations, roles tend to become more specialized and therefore keeping a broad perspective is very important.
In my experience, the background in engineering has made it easy to gain credibility with technical people. I have seen the same sentiment in some of the other comments and it's hard to overstate it.
My key base skill is speaking multiple languages: the engineering language, the design language, the people language and the business language. That can be applied to many things, PM being one of them. If you are strictly an engineer, gain experience and exposure to other things.