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Advice needed: programmer looking to shift to project management

D

Dougmeister

Senior member
~20 years of miscellaneous programming experience

Ranges all over: defunct languages, highly-specialized proprietary languages, Visual Basic, Access/VBA, ASP, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP.NET (VB.NET, C#), some T-SQL, etc.

I want/need to make a career-shift and am considering project management/team lead. My technical skills are average. Skills in which I feel I am above average include: interpersonal, communication, organizational, mediating, etc.

I can "spin" my current resume to accentuate my team lead experience, but getting a job directly in this new area may be difficult. That's my first question. Am I right?

Second question: how much will it help to get my PMP first?

Third question: what is the most efficient way to get my PMP?

Thanks.

Oh, and please feel free to refer me to another forum/board where maybe geeks who do this kind of thing for a living hang out ;-)
 
I'm just a dev, but a lot of the PMs I know have their PMP. I'm pretty sure you have to have several thousand documented, verifiable project management hours before you can get it.

Personally, I couldn't switch to being a PM. It would be too difficult to pull back from the technical side and just manage clients and resources. I'd get bored.
 
Geeks who do what kind of thing for a living? Project management? I suspect there are rather few of those.

Yes, you're right. Getting a job in this area will be difficult, and not just because you don't have a formal track record as a project manager. Read that list of your strengths again, and you should realize that it is right in the sweet spot of every laid-off middle management type who has been smacked by the Great Recession. I personally know two project managers with certification who have been out for over a year now and can't find squat. The key to economic success is a skill set that you can leverage to your benefit. How do you leverage skills that every college graduate in the world thinks they possess in abundance? Not to mention everyone who used to be a PM, got promoted, laid off, and now wants to be a PM again.

Personally I think you're making a mistake, but if its really what you want to do then you're going to have to fight five times as hard as the next guy for your first position. The best opportunity would be an internal one where you currently work, because, let's face it, the bulk of project management is knowing all the specific stuff about a specific employer and its customers and projects.
 
Why has your career path not taken you there in 20 years?

I guess I have alot of design under my belt after 10 years, but software lead should be on the path to project lead. Granted, the two can sometimes be the same thing unless it is a very large project with mutliple executables.
 
Dilbert principle: If you want to be a manager, you need to be a totally incompetent worker.... err hey wait I'm a manager.
 
IHateMyJob2004 said:
Why has your career path not taken you there in 20 years?

I guess I have alot of design under my belt after 10 years, but software lead should be on the path to project lead. Granted, the two can sometimes be the same thing unless it is a very large project with mutliple executables.
Click to expand...

Project Lead and Project Manager are two seperate paths.

One is involved with technical work/oversight.

The other becomes more of a paper pusher.

Even as CEO, I try to pawn off the paper pushing on the wife - I need to keep my hands dirty and on the pulse of the projects.
 
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