I've found that my technical background as a practicing engineer has helped me quite a bit when moving over to the product and marketing sides.
In new product development, for example, when I set up some new feature requirements based on my expectations for the market or actual customer requests, and the engineering team pushes back (which they ALWAYS do), I'm able to challenge them in an informed way. Sometimes they have good reasons, other times they're simply being lazy. I've done their job and I know the differences, because sometimes I was just lazy too.
Not really lazy, to be fair. It tends to be a result of an engineering mindset that you know better than the customer, and so taking on new work is pointless. When in reality, the customer wants what the customer wants. It may or may not be deliverable in a timely or profitable manner for my own company, but pushing back simply for the sake of pushing back occurs pretty regularly. And it's MY job to determine the profitability, not the engineers', because honestly they have no idea.
My technical background has given me the skills to understand when that's happening, and it's also given me the credibility with the engineering teams that they know I'm not just busting their balls for no reason. Then we can work collaboratively to find a solution. Works out pretty well, ultimately.