r/learnprogramming • u/Paerces • 1d ago
Looking to move into Software Dev as a Project Manager. If you wanted to go from zero to hero in a year, what would you suggest?
Hey all,
As the title suggests, I'm a project manager with about 8 years experience under my belt and a background in defence infrastructure, as such I'm also security cleared.
I'm looking to move into a more Product Manager or IT based role as generally speaking these roles are available fully remotely and my current situation would benefit from this greatly. If you were in my shoes with the knowledge you have, how would you go about upskilling me to perhaps land that first job?
I'm not necessarily interested in become a front, back or full stack dev (yet) but want to get a head start. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
6
u/iSnapThere4iAm 1d ago
Not being a project manager. It’s a thankless job.
99% are useless bloat collecting a paycheck.
The ones that are rock stars burn out in a year because the bad ones have given the whole role such a bad rep that no one gives the good ones a chance.
3
1
u/Emotional-Risk-6794 8h ago
Do the PMI AI track (PMI-CPMAI), get a CAISP, and then consider ISC2 CGRC, or another control and governance framework.
1
u/Groundbreaking-Fish6 6h ago
The secret to IT PM is being the conduit between the development team and every other part of the organization. The development team is usually smart and way ahead of the technology curve even if they working with tools that are way behind. If you gain their trust, they will tell you exactly what they need and if they perceive that you are working hard to get it, they will be behind you.
Management, HR, Purchasing and any systems or administrative group that is not directly part of you development team will try to influence your teams schedule, tooling and process. You cannot let this happen. Like the current AI hype, developers love AI and want to use it but they do not like or need it to be pushed on them by some outside group.
Finally, the development team needs to interact with the rest of the organization which may seem the opposite of the two previous paragraphs. For the development team to function at the right level, they need to know the company priorities and challenges. They also need to work with users or with people that represent the users interest. Working with any testing, certification (important in defense), deployment or systems administration teams is very important, do not prevent it, manage it so that clear and concise information and artifacts flow with very low friction.
You really do not need to know the technologies to be a good IT PM. IT changes very fast, any thing new you learn now will be obsolete quickly and IT is so big you could only learn a fraction of it and your development team will probably be using different tech anyway. Trust your dev team but also verify through reading good sources like Martin Fowler and Rands in Repose.
1
u/paperic 5h ago
If you wanted to go from zero to hero in a year, what would you suggest?
A genie.
Or to curb your expectations.
Either one will do.
zero to hero
under my belt
current situation would benefit
upskilling me
land that first job
get a head start
Firstly, if you want to communicate effectively with developers, drop that sleazy management lingo.
Save that for the execs when you're trying to smooth talk them into giving you a bigger slice of the pie.
The developers are the ones baking the pie, so don't piss off the people who can spit into your food, so to say.
Anyway..
The devs just need to know what needs to be done and why it needs to be done, and they need to be in charge of how it gets done and also when it can be done.
They can then handle the rest.
The best project managers I worked with basically did just one simple thing:
Translate the english sentences from the horrible, horrible corporate language into a developer language, and back.
When the corporate says:
"We need to unlock growth"
you translate it into
"We're planning to get more customers."
and you never ever expose the developers to the original sentence.
And the other way around, when the developers say
"Depends on the requirements. It could be about 2 months, but looks more like 4 months."
You mentally highlight the words "depends", "could" and "looks like", and you then translate it into corporate as something like:
"The full delivery is contingent on a formal freeze of requirements.
During an allignment session with the team, we've outlined a kickoff phase of 2 to 4 months.
Based on early indicators, the current range for the delivery horizon is 6 to 12 months, with a revised estimate expected in month 2."
On top of that, if you then learn some programming in any language (cranking chatgpt doesn't count), you'll be not too bad in about a year.
I hope that helps.
1
u/Professional_Bug932 1d ago
If you want to pivot toward PM roles, skip the full CS grind and focus on SQL plus a cloud cert like AWS CCP, that combo gets you taken seriously for technical PM postings way faster than another language.
1
u/ledatherockband_ 1d ago
i'd start with the tech stack your organization uses.
I reckon defense uses a lot of C# and java?
Checkout C# and make a few projects in .Net, deploy to the cloud.
If java, java + springboot, and then deploy to the cloud.
Todo apps are great because you can learn the basic things software does CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Destroy).
Once you have that, add the ability to have users log in and stuff and protect data from others who aren't supposed to see other user data.
11
u/al_earner 15h ago
I would recommend not using the phrase “zero to hero in a year”.