From Software Engineer to Product Manager
From Software Engineer to Product Manager
I spent four years as a software engineer at Ernst and Young, building applications for customers across US tax, wealth management, and fraud dispute and due diligence. Then I did an MBA at T.A. Pai Management Institute and moved into product management, first at Optum and now at Tesco. Some of what I learned as an engineer has helped a lot. Some of it I had to unlearn.
What carried over
Understanding how systems are built makes it easier to talk with engineering teams about trade-offs. When I led the move of Tesco's ordering engine to an API-first design, my engineering background helped me follow the architecture discussions and ask useful questions. Building reusable components at EY also taught me to value work that makes the next release faster.
What I had to unlearn
As an engineer, I measured progress by what was built. As a product manager, progress is measured by what changes for the user or the business. A well-built feature that nobody needs is not progress. Learning to start from the problem, not the solution, took deliberate effort.
Research is a real skill
My internships during the MBA, at Optum and The ProdZen, were mostly research: market assessment, competitor analysis, market sizing and customer interviews. That work showed me that understanding a market well is as rigorous as writing good code.
Workflows matter as much as features
At Optum I managed a claims overpayment recovery platform. Much of the value came from simplifying the workflow for operations teams and healthcare providers, not from adding new screens. That lesson has followed me into supply chain.
The two roles need each other
Good products come from engineers and product managers who respect each other's work. Having been on both sides, I try to give my teams clear problems and the room to solve them well.
Sunil skipped presentations and built real AI products.
Sunil S Sakri was part of the August 2026 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 24 other talented participants.