this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Front-end web dev can be very competitive in large part due to the abundance of boot camps like the one you attended. I say differentiate yourself with project management knowledge (even going as far as getting a PMP once you land a job and get experience). This will help you stand out and will open more doors down the road. This isn't going to be as hands-on with coding but that techno-functional role is sorely needed and job prospects look much better
Can you tell me more about this or where to read more? It's the first time I've heard of project management in development - I usually hear it associated with the business side of things.
Sure thing, it's the intersection of those two worlds - often times the degree associated with this type of work is 'Managent Information Systems' and falls under the business school but also involves programming though typically at a more practical level and less theoretical and in the weeds compared to computer science.
I see these jobs in two places:
It is a very lucrative market but can be quite competitive especially when talking about positions at the Big 4
This is the industry I am in so feel free to ask more
I'll take you up on that offer.
What sort of hard vs soft skills do you have? Or, what skills would you say that you use most often in day to day?
What sort of terms, ideas, or concepts go into this type of work?
Lastly, how would someone study or work towards this? It sounds like something that would strictly require a business degree.
Now my soft skills are 99% of my job but for the first ~8 years it was probably 60% programming and 40% sales, networking, and project management.
It's a lot of work centered around managing customer expectations, ensuring the effort is remaining in scope as defined in the SOW, status reporting, and requirements gathering
I would say it doesn't require a business degree only because while I have one, I never went to class so I certainly didn't learn what was needed for the job in school - that just helped with networking and getting my foot in the door. I would study agile methodology and see what certifications you can find for it / scrum. Once you land the first job in this area it's all about keeping up to date on technical skills and honing ones soft skills. For my career progression it played out like this:
Years 1-3 : diving deep into the technical side of things and showing off my prowess by tackling increasingly more difficult use cases
Year 4 : learning how to manage a project and what the true concerns of my customers were.
Years 5-7 : learning how to manage a team and how to connect with my team members as everyone is different. During this time I also dove headfirst into code versioning and devops and deployed a self-hosted Gitlab instance, created a devops pipeline, and created a slew of internal tools that helped other work streams besides my own.
Years 8-9: tackling sales efforts and learning how to position all the processes and service offerings I had crafted in the years prior.
Years 9-11(current) : learning how to manage a team of solutions architects in a large tech company that is highly political.
This is incredibly helpful and gives me something to aim for. Some of what you've mentioned reminds me of the book "Never Split the Difference." Are there any resources or tips you've found helpful in encouraging teamwork or cohesion within a team? Or was most of the learning on the job and mostly gained through experience?