I can see it both ways, but hereās my personal version. EE degrees, highly technical and fairly specialized, good at mentoring and people management, can explain hard technical concepts clearly. These are my strengths. I fucking hate project management and, because I wonāt lift a finger doing it, have been (and will continue to be) terrible at it if you put me in that role. This is my biggest weakness.
āBut Volente, youāre not interviewing for a PM role?ā Welllllll, kinda. In 2021 weāre in a place where lots of electronics companies need engineers to review designs from low cost geographies, manage BOMs, and generally handle logistics of procurement and schedule, while doing very little design work. These come with engineering titles and good salaries, but itās day to day PM work. I do not want such a job short of personal emergency. So, if Iām interviewing, I want to ensure that if there is a PM job hidden under the flowery prose of solving technical problems or managing people, that they clearly know Iāll suck at it because Iāll hate it. It is generally hard to get good engineers to take PM centric roles, so these are often intentionally disguised.