If you feel that way, use your business skills to build a business. I am an eng, a good one perhaps, and I lack the skills of a competent PM.
Find someone to complement you, then try changing the world. one small project at a time.
Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
171–180 of 229 posts
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks super helpful. Had a couple of followups: (1) Which boot camp did you attend if you don't mind me asking and in what city? (2) How you find the job interview process? (3) What kind of work are you doing now? (4) Do you feel that today you could learn anything you wanted to learn for example deep learning if you put in time or do you feel webdev is extent of what you can do? (5) What do you enjoy most about it?…
1) app academy San Francisco 2) it was challenging you get rejected a lot, you get tons of homework projects, and you end up having to practice skills that are useless for your job. I am dreading when I have to do the next job hunt (a lot of engineers hate the process). On the plus side most companies will want to interview you because of your background. 3) I am doing full stack web dev. Started mostly on the front…
> I feel lost and dumb a lot of the times. I realize now this feeling will never go away as an engineer - it's a part of the job.
No it's not. As you gain experience your feeling should be, "since I'm the expert in this company/industry on this, we'll do it this way ..."
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#173I'd think the complete opposite of you. We'll need a few PMs around to manage the army of AI programming bots.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. And if you do end up programming and you demonstrate any experience managing projects, you will end up in that role again, just with less respect for it and less money.
Mgmt > Mgmt + Dev ?
yes. there is a mental cost of doing management on development, and if you try to keep both, you'll consume yourself. and managers do get more respect, it's probably universal.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#175Yes you are. I'm a PM and researched this decision myself a few months back. Most of the "well regarded" bootcamps teach basic front skills (HTML/CSS/JS). You're going to struggle to get a job in any of the the exciting technologies you've listed with this skillset. It's also not widely talked about, but I get the sense that there's a bit of negative signal associated with these boot camps a la ITT/University of Phoe…
> the best way to ensure you're working with cool technologies is to start your own company.
And, I would add, experience as a PM is very valuable when starting your own company. Project management and coordination are the sorts of skills that many people starting companies do not have and do not realize they need.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#176Yes you are. I'm a PM and researched this decision myself a few months back. Most of the "well regarded" bootcamps teach basic front skills (HTML/CSS/JS). You're going to struggle to get a job in any of the the exciting technologies you've listed with this skillset. It's also not widely talked about, but I get the sense that there's a bit of negative signal associated with these boot camps a la ITT/University of Phoe…
> the best way to ensure you're working with cool technologies is to start your own company. And, I would add, experience as a PM is very valuable when starting your own company. Project management and coordination are the sorts of skills that many people starting companies do not have and do not realize they need.
This! But for slightly different reasons.
Yes, you would probably find value in picking up coding skills. Foundational rather that practical as you're unlikely to deliver more value than someone who has dedicated 100% of their training and work experience to practical coding.
The new coding knowledge isn't going to be where you deliver value though. Most of the new value you create in yourself will be as "an experienced PM who also knows how to code", so start thinking about what kinds of opportunities might be a good fit for that future you. There will always be fewer people with your synergy of skills than there will be with experience in each individual skill domain you posses.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#177Yes you are. I'm a PM and researched this decision myself a few months back. Most of the "well regarded" bootcamps teach basic front skills (HTML/CSS/JS). You're going to struggle to get a job in any of the the exciting technologies you've listed with this skillset. It's also not widely talked about, but I get the sense that there's a bit of negative signal associated with these boot camps a la ITT/University of Phoe…
Management is becoming more, not less, important. Good management is the number one competitive advantage an enterprise has. Management essentially means running the corporate machine and directing the efforts of its tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. If poorly directed, effort is wasted. As the world is seemingly centralizing into a handful of large corporations, good management is more important than ever…
As a mostly technical consulting resource, I agree so much. There is a lot that needs to be held in my brain at once, and every release of the software just adds to that. Every new client adds to that. Every new technology adds to that.
I seriously struggle to keep the non-tech side of the house in order by myself. I can handle client interactions and emails and task tracking and mentoring new hires and performing my technical job. I'm even on a project supporting an install of our product that's 8 versions out of date, that was released in 2013. That's pulling in skills I haven't used in over two years, but I can still remember what commands worked on that release and what commands were introduced in later versions.
What I don't have time or mental capacity for is making sure we're within budget, both in terms of hours and in terms of dollars. I don't have capacity to sit on every advisory board meeting, of which there are six hours worth internally every week, and at least two hours per client per week (I have 10 clients). I don't have capacity to put my project on hold while I track down an updated billing code.
I thank god every day for project managers. Some people complain, but I love them. Sure, they take a bit of my time and they don't always understand what I do, but they save me even more time and I sure as hell don't always understand what they do.
As an aside, I think the most annoying thing in the world is when a PM thinks they're a technical resource and starts telling me how to do my job. "Hey can you log into Client X's system and run the command 'xyz' with the flags '-yVx' and send me the output?" Uh, no... I know what you're looking for and the better way to get it is directly from the database. Don't worry, I know the command. Stop using Stack Overflow and do your job.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#178Please don't do that if your goal is to learn Block Chain or Deep Learning. The goals of most bootcamps is to get you a job in software. If you can find a bootcamp that can match your goals, then it might be very worthwhile, otherwise you can probably start by learning on your own online and practice by developing your own projects.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#179You are not crazy to make that career switch, but I'm not sure that a dev bootcamp will really help you get there. Dabble in the aforementioned areas in your free time. I'm guessing you probably have at least a few software engineer friends who could probably give you some pointers along the way. IMO it's not worth the $$ and time to attend a dev bootcamp to learn how to build a few web apps.
Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
#180You'll become an experienced coder just in time for you to be old enough so that no one will want to hire you anymore.
Then you will think "Fuck if I were a PM, I would be a VP at this point, and my skills would be more sought after as I got older, not the opposite for a coder."
Stick with being a PM. If you like technology read up on it or program on the side.