Easier to switch from SWE to PM or vice versa?

Really challenging to do either these days. In the olden days when PMs were rare and relatively senior/experienced there was a clear path that developers could take to move towards a PM role. Something of a branch between the intermediate and senior software levels or heading to PM vs Eng manager.

These days there are so many more PMs and they’re so much more junior. There is largely an expectation of coming up through their ranks. I don’t think it’s right, and I don’t think it’s a positive for the industry in general to have people in PM roles who have never experienced other more clear cut roles before (whether dev, or analyst, or marketing, or whatever) moving into something with the ambiguity and responsibility of a PM. But it’s where we are.

Overall it’s probably similar difficulty to get “adopted” by a PM or SWE group that your team works closely with.