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As a 40 year old who has been in software for last 20 years and managed hardware+software product construction a few years, from implementation to management, h
by bfung 5y ago
As a 40 year old who has been in software for last 20 years and managed hardware+software product construction a few years, from implementation to management, here’s my advice given your experiences and time constraints:
* Play to your strengths
Leverage your experiences and map them over to software. The only real difference is that the QA and shipping process can be updated hourly vs hardware which takes months at minimum, so build perfection isn’t as hard of a constraint.
Leverage your finance, strat, and operations knowledge. That’s basically the Eng. Manager’s job (Director level/VP level?). Most coders can’t tell you the business value of their code/tasks - that’s a problem to bridge the value prop back to the business side. Also most “Eng” think there’s infinite resources, but don’t account for costs $$$ to use cloud services.
My advice:
* learn the software construction process
* DO NOT GO INTO IMPLEMENTATION - unless you’re super passionate about it, there’s no way to be proficient or good at it in 1.5 years - college grads will lap you. CS grads by default have done it for 4years and are still usually not that ready to switch from solo academia into a team, corporate standard.
Hope that gives you a perspective to consider!
- 5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN 5y agoThanks for the comment. Can you say a bit more regarding the software construction versus implementation note? I'm not sure I understand the meaning. My profile has my email too if you prefer non-public communication. Genuinely interested in your insight.
- michael_j_ward 5y agoFrom the rest of the parent comment, I imagine construction is the whole software development lifecycle [0]. In particular, understanding the finance / business side gives you a huge edge in the "figuring out what to build" part of the cycle because you'll have a deeper understanding of the business need and value proposition. Implementation is picking which "language / framework / paradigm /architecture" is used to deliver the business need. You will need to understand these at some base level, but becoming an expert in them won't have the ROI that learning to manage the lifecycle will. Lastly, when learning about software- literally nothing compares with doing it side-by-side with professionals. Do a free course but then immediately start applying. You'll learn more in a few months on the job than you will in a few years of self study. [0] https://www.upwork.com/resources/what-is-software-development-life-cycle https://www.upwork.com/resources/what-is-software-developmen...
- bfung 5y agoThat’s exactly what I mean, thanks for explaining!