Hacker News Reader

Microsoft hires program managers (what other tech firms call product managers) straight out of college. Almost all of the PM-I employees I met at Microsoft were college hires with CS degrees who had taken few or no business or marketing classes.

That's a fair point. I make less as a PM than I did when I was an Engineer, but I had 13 years of engineering experience before I transitioned. All of the new PMs I've worked with have a minimum of 5 years of experience in some other related role and most have a related degree.

I was a PM straight out of college and know many PMs straight out college. Both at the big companies like Google and smaller companies.