I'm a contracts manager at a large tech company who has recently been offered a transfer role within my company to a "program manager" role embedded within a product team. How can I best evaluate whether the new role will be a strong growth opportunity, and how can I ensure strong career and skill return on investment?This would involve leaving the legal track into a quasi-technical program management (managing many projects at once with a technical focus) role, working closely within engineers, product managers and leads, policy, PR, legal. I'm also very interested in product development and product management, as I have a technical interest and understanding how products work, and in 10 years want to be in a (non-coding) operations or product management role. Would appreciate guidance on evaluating the strength of this offer.

closed as off-topic by Philip Kendall, Masked Man, gnat, Chris E, Retired Codger Jan 13 '17 at 20:39



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    I'm afraid we can't give you advice on what to do here. We don't know your circumstances, your background, or your goals or aspirations. You would be best off talking to friends and family who know you and who you trust to give you advice. – Jane S Jan 13 '17 at 0:24
  • I believe I gave as much of a description of my background and circumstances as I can without outing myself or getting into specific personal preferences. – user27186 Jan 13 '17 at 0:24
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    That's my point. It's not answerable by the Internet. – Jane S Jan 13 '17 at 0:26
  • What is it in particular about my question v. other questions that makes in unanswerable by workplace.stackexchange? – user27186 Jan 13 '17 at 0:27
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    Please see meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/… as to why the question is off topic. Please note that the question has already attracted close votes for this reason (not from me). – Jane S Jan 13 '17 at 0:31

A role transfer that would involve you losing your contract background for ever - that might not be as attractive as being able to combine at some point the contracts background and the program manager expertise into something much bigger.

As a program manager with a contracts background, you might see things that other program managers don't and you might be beneficial to the firm as a program manager in a way that other program managers can't.

Ditto if you are a contracts manager with a program manager background,

You're going to have to be the one who makes the combo work for you, though, and the one who has to convincingly make the case that your multi-disciplinary background can be a unique asset to the firm, if deployed properly. No one can do it for you but you.
