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Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

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Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#81
NOT crazy at all. Actually this is a very good idea. Being able to code makes you a much better PM and help you gain respect of engineers. It will also will help you become a better tech entrepreneur or exec if you ever choose to be.

Having some kind of hard technical skill very important. It help you tackle harder problems that arises in the future. For example let say AI becomes increasingly important. Since you know some code, you ability to lead in this a new technical field will be better than someone with no technical ability.

FYI i'm a coder and founder of a software company. Most of my time is spend on PM now.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, PM does not need to understand user needs and drive product. It's a job for other people (product management, ux/cx analysts etc). The PMs primary function is to facilitate communication in the extended team, so that it will achieve the desired goals in given time, and this means his focus is internal, not external.

I believe PM in the context of the original post was referring to product management, not project management

Oh, right, thanks. Misunderstood it.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#83
Your are crazy. I taught myself rails part time using Lynda.com. I'm a sales and marketing manager, but love tech and wanted to build stuff.

The skills you pick up learning to code will be tremendous for managing others to build what you need.

Coding is hard to do well and takes years to get really good at it, and you will likely need to start at the bottom of the food chain to get the right coaching and support. I'd recommending learning enough code to be dangerous but get experts to help you do the hard stuff.

That said if this choice is about happiness, then go with your heart. Money shouldn't factor into that decision, it will come over time.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#84

Sounds like we are of similar backgrounds. I was a well paid PM, I've worked at a top tech company, and I had strategy consulting experience before that. I quit my job went into a bootcamp and have been a software developer for a year plus. I've been pretty happy with the decision. My reasons were completely different though and were more about understanding what I was good at and passionate about. I think I can help…

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? (6) Enjoy least? (7) What was different than you expected going in? (8) Where do you see yourself going in the future as a software engineer? -- Thanks a ton for your help.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#86
As someone who has had several 'crazy' career moves over the years, it may well be crazy to do it, and yet still be the right thing to do for you. I think the best way to do this would be to keep working, but to study part-time with Udacity. Continuing to work in a good tech company gives you a big advantage in that your "professional network" (aka "people you know") contains a lot of smart developers, a small number of whom may have made similar career moves. It would be worth asking around in person or on your internal work chat groups etc to see if anyone has experience with Udacity courses, then meet up for a coffee and a chat. Don't say you want to change jobs, just start by saying you want to understand better what developers do, and that's why you want to learn to code. That makes you a more valuable PM, while at the same time you are building the skills that would let you make a career change.

As you learn more, you should keep in touch with those devs, and you can ask them for feedback on the projects you work on (clearly, the onus is on you to not abuse their time, but most people like to help someone who is hardworking, enthusiastic and respectful). Then, by the time you've developed your skills to the point you could take an entry level developer position, you will also have a bunch of developers in the company who know you, know how hard you've been working, and will often be willing to pass on knowledge of openings, and put in a good word for you in the hiring process. Also, don't ignore the possibility of joining a startup once you have sufficient technical skills, a growing startup is exactly the kind of place that would greatly benefit from someone who understands team and project management and can deliver good code. They will hire you for the technical skills, not the PM skills, but that doesn't take away their value. Email me if you'd like to discuss further, and best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#89

Yes very crazy. I have a anecdotal survey of all coders I know: most of whom all graduated from only median Tier-2 US & News Report Ranked Nat'l Universities (>15) and whom have on average, earn only median Fortune Magazine's Best Jobs annual ranked salaries as Application Developer, and only very few employed by Forbes' Most Admired Companies list or who are on the Mattermark's Top 100 Startup Index. Most don't feel…

I don't think this is entirely accurate. Yes, enterprise coding can be really boring and mundane, but just as often it can be interesting and challenging and involve new technologies. As an entry level programmer, sure, you'll do Jira tickets and HTML fixes, but once you get just a touch of seniority, depending on the organization, you can get some neat opportunities. Lots of enterprise coders are tasked with evaluat…

I'm going to disagree with the bootcamp grads don't do interesting work. My company employees a couple bootcamp grads including myself. All of them work on what are considered the most critical teams in our company. I work on search, which has some of the best engineers in our company. I will be working on elastic search, building our first angular 2 app, and I might even get a little exposure to machine learning / nlp.

I also extremely disagree with the do a bootcamp and then go back to a pm. You will have wasted a lot of money and will definitely not absorb much. We have bootcamp grads who have done that and they forget everything they learned. You need at least a year of professional experience to really get any meaningful knowledge. Not recommended.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#90
I would suggest that rather than a "coding bootcamp" you take courses from your local community college, state college, or similar (do you have something like Harvard Extension School?) in actual computer science and software engineering.

But yes, by all means, if your goal is to learn to write software yourself, go ahead and get that extra education.

Coding bootcamps produce people who are conversant in the hot technology of the week, but if they were weak on fundamentals going in they're still probably going to be weak on fundamentals coming out. If you want to be a leader in the field, and not in the rank and file, you need strong fundamentals.

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