Mastercard

Mastercard

Mastercard Inc. is a payment processing company offering a range of financial services. Its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card-issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use Mastercard-brand cards.

How do I advance from Software Engineering to Product?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Mastercard profile pic
Mid-Level Software Engineer at Mastercard

Hello,

This platform is awesome and I've been looking at a bunch of resources for career advancement. One aspect that strikes me is to play into my strength. While I do enjoy coding (only if it's front-end or mobile -- visual stuff!), it's not my strength or something I will really do outside my job. I do love being in any conversations that involve innovative features for our customers, making our product more modern aesthetically, or questioning the features we do have. The idea of being a staff/lead/principle engineer keeping up with latest angular features or being on call outside job hours to fix some server or UI issues come up isn't really appealing. But I do want to grow. I want the chance to mentor people, influence a project, be in cahoots with people who make decisions about what we want to create, be close with customers, etc. I love the design (UX) aspect as well.

If I stay as I am, I know I will slowly grow linearly in this software engineer role. I do think I will get the senior developer role next year. But most folks who have a C-suite role in product or beyond seem to have an MBA but I am not sure if that's a valid move nowadays. I am taking a couple of tiny PM projects but outside that, what can I do to have the best chance of landing a C-suite role later in my career and making an impact beyond coding?

Looking forward to your replies!

Show more
283 Views
4 Likes
3 Comments
5 months ago