New ask Hacker News story: How to move from Product back to Engineering?

How to move from Product back to Engineering?
2 by technicalPM | 0 comments on Hacker News.
My background: I never got a CS degree because I started programming when I was 12, building simple programs, games and websites. By the time I was college age, I already had a bit of experience and was working part time developing websites and doing IT support. I've now worked in "tech" for 18 years. I started as a "web dev" in an agency and moved on to full-stack software engineering in a few startups and then for bigger companies, including a FAANG company. I worked as a SWE, a Eng Manager, and then moved into more hybrid roles until I fully switched over to Product Manager about 7 years ago. The problem: I've worked as a Technical Product Manager and Senior Product Manager for a few tech companies. The problem is that I've found Product Management to be interesting, but ultimately less challenging that Engineering, at least in the ways I enjoy being challenged. Most of my time is spent in meetings, coordinating other people's ideas to other people's work. I'd love to get back to actually building and engineering. I'm probably not the most brilliant SWE to ever live, but I'm also not horrible - I've contributed to a book on JS and have built quite a few successful sites and apps. I even keep pretty current by building hobby projects and side projects when I have time. My conversations with other engineers would lead me to believe I'm actually more up-to-date than many of them, at least on full-stack oriented languages and libraries. When I talk to recruiters or inquire about positions, I get one of two responses. 1) We require a CS degree 2) Disbelief that I can work as a SWE (don't have current skills) Anyone have any advice on going back to Engineering from Product?