Project manager - RE-TRAINING but in what?

[WHoSaidthis]

been contracting in the project Manager space for about 15years and given market, would like the opportunity to retrain and specialise in what is considered to be ‘hot’.

Security seems interesting but I have no idea where to start?

Aim is to be employable at all times and be able to earn upwards of £600/day. Current market conditions make it hard given influx of PMs, change managers etc

Thanks in advance

[perplexed]

It can be difficult to gain traction with a total switch of focus. You'd have a better view of where best to segue into I guess, but maybe scrum master / product owner type things?

[ladymuck]

Try to find roles that will expose you to the areas you're interested in finding out more on.

My uncle's tactic (he's a programme manager) was to always sit down with the techies/SMEs on a project and ask them their approach to certain things in a way that made them feel included rather than pumped for info. Then he'd use that to bolster his own knowledge and pad out his CV.

That then gets you onto projects with the target skill(s) where you can work out ways of getting the hands on experience on the job with which to aid your move over. At some point, a bit of paper in the form of an industry standard qualification will help you formalise things.

Keeps you earning too, while you're at it, but takes a while.

[CosmicWave]

IMO chasing these so-called ‘hot’ things and learning them generally leads you nowhere tangible and gainful.

There are millions of hot things going on and these hot things get abandoned in less than few weeks or months for few other brand new hot things, thanks to all these open source initiatives.

Nowadays everyone is a creator, and there are million frameworks popping up in github and what not, making you go crazy to understand what you need to master.... because by the time you master something or even learn with some passion, that thing is completely abandoned for something new - which will only last a few weeks themselves, perhaps.

Try picking something stable and where also luckily your real passion lies, rather than chasing every vanishing things... some example of this craziness field is Agile non-sense, dev ops & cloud computing (there are at least a billion services you will need to understand), big data tech-stack (data-lake, data-ocean, data-brick, data-stone, data-rubble, data-<more to come tomorrow>, looker, wanderer, mover, shaker, and million others), and javascript frameworks (what is also popularly nick-named the 'snake-pit').

There are zillion things you will be asked to prove your knowledge on, specifically in these things - especially in job ads and interviews, that you will end in tears.

My post perhaps is not that helpful for your question, but I thought I will throw this in, just so you don’t end up chasing things that vanish in few weeks - which is pretty much everything these days.

Good luck.

[jayn200]

IMO chasing these so-called ‘hot’ things and learning them generally leads you nowhere tangible and gainful.

There are millions of hot things going on and these hot things get abandoned in less than few weeks or months for few other brand new hot things, thanks to all these open source initiatives.

Nowadays everyone is a creator, and there are million frameworks popping up in github and what not, making you go crazy to understand what you need to master.... because by the time you master something or even learn with some passion, that thing is completely abandoned for something new - which will only last a few weeks themselves, perhaps.

Try picking something stable and where also luckily your real passion lies, rather than chasing every vanishing things... some example of this craziness field is Agile non-sense, dev ops & cloud computing (there are at least a billion services you will need to understand), big data tech-stack (data-lake, data-ocean, data-brick, data-stone, data-rubble, data-<more to come tomorrow>, looker, wanderer, mover, shaker, and million others), and javascript frameworks (what is also popularly nick-named the 'snake-pit').

There are zillion things you will be asked to prove your knowledge on, specifically in these things - especially in job ads and interviews, that you will end in tears.

My post perhaps is not that helpful for your question, but I thought I will throw this in, just so you don’t end up chasing things that vanish in few weeks - which is pretty much everything these days.

Good luck.

Agile, cloud, big data, javascript??? You picked some really poor examples. Those all have massive staying power.

I am gonna guess you have 0 tech experience.

[perplexed]

IMO chasing these so-called ‘hot’ things and learning them generally leads you nowhere tangible and gainful.

There are millions of hot things going on and these hot things get abandoned in less than few weeks or months for few other brand new hot things, thanks to all these open source initiatives.

Nowadays everyone is a creator, and there are million frameworks popping up in github and what not, making you go crazy to understand what you need to master.... because by the time you master something or even learn with some passion, that thing is completely abandoned for something new - which will only last a few weeks themselves, perhaps.

Try picking something stable and where also luckily your real passion lies, rather than chasing every vanishing things... some example of this craziness field is Agile non-sense, dev ops & cloud computing (there are at least a billion services you will need to understand), big data tech-stack (data-lake, data-ocean, data-brick, data-stone, data-rubble, data-<more to come tomorrow>, looker, wanderer, mover, shaker, and million others), and javascript frameworks (what is also popularly nick-named the 'snake-pit').

There are zillion things you will be asked to prove your knowledge on, specifically in these things - especially in job ads and interviews, that you will end in tears.

My post perhaps is not that helpful for your question, but I thought I will throw this in, just so you don’t end up chasing things that vanish in few weeks - which is pretty much everything these days.

Good luck.

A framework being on github doesn't mean that framework is in widespread use and needs to be learned. Understanding fundamentals is key.

Agile "non-sense"? Really? Care to quantify your view?
DevOps? Interesting concept, has many positives.
Cloud? Incredibly useful tech, not going away anytime soon.

I sense you're looking for PM roles?

[GhostofTarbera]

Retirement might be a good option

No one is going to give 600 a day for a newbie (bigData security, brain surgeon)

You are dreaming


Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

[dsc]

£600/day in what amount of time from retraining?

In a few years if you are really good in what you pick perhaps, assuming contracting is not completely dead in the UK and there's a huge shortage of people in that specific skillset. Be ready to take a junior position somewhere as perm on low money or move to a country where juniors still get paid a fair amount more than the rest and re-train there.

[simes]

Current market conditions make it hard given influx of PMs, change managers etc

Not wishing to pour cold water on any enthusiasm but, isn't it fair to say that current market conditions will make it hard to get anything? And no matter the training, experience always counts first and foremost.

Which might mean that while learnin' something new is laudable, expecting a career from it right now is unlikely. And gaining the experience, a la ladymuck's example, might again be difficult due to the aforementioned market condition.

So while you mention 'security', do you mean as a PM, or as something more consultative?

Either way, if you're looking to learn, I'd get every PM qualification known to man and be one of those people that Can actually tick every bloody box that the, deep breath, current market condition is forcing upon us via recruiters and agents.

Contractors tend to do, what they've done. No more so than now.

[BR14]

i can't think of Anything a PM's good for, really. sorry.
i'm an engineer.