It was a little over 5 years ago when I made the move to the dark side :-)
A couple of years prior to making the change, I had been working in web design. Part of my role was to interact with the customer, review their designs and requests for changes, and take their requests back to management for approval before starting coding. When the dotcom bubble burst, I found myself out of a job and competing with experienced developers for entry-level work. Not a pleasant situation.
After doing some freelance work, I went to work at the Helpdesk at Delta Dental. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was a good company to work for and my peers were good to work with.
After being there for almost 2 years, my manager was talking to our team, during a team meeting, about a new business unit that was forming and that our director was going to hire a project manager to work with them in order to understand their support requirements. After the meeting, I asked him why do we need to bring in a PM that does not know the business when we have people on staff that know the people and how the business works. Why not promote one of us and bring in a contractor to the Helpdesk?
I have to admit, my suggestion was not completely selfless. My Team Lead was talking about wanting to get into Project Management, and I had my eye on her role as Team Lead. Funny how things work out, though. I was in a training class the following week when my manager called me about the PM position and asked me when I could start.
Was it the right choice? I would not say it was the wrong choice, but I do think it was a good choice. I still miss web design, sometimes, but being a PM puts me in the position to leverage both my technical and customer service/sales skills developed in previous postions, and brings my closer to my goals to work in strategic planning and portfolio management. Even if I don't have the PM title 10 years from now, I will still be using skills developed while acting in that role. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
I also made the move about 5yrs ago, from a QA Team Lead position in the same organisation.
Did I make the right choice? Yes, from a career perspective however the one area that surprised me is how little leverage/support you can have if the organisation culture isn't geared towards empowering PMs. Sure, you can change things - but this is often easier said than done.
I have also noticed in recent years, a trend for just about anyone to call themselves 'project manager' in our organisation, which tends to de-value the role in my opinion. I believe this is true across the industry to some extent. Perhaps we can blame a lot of this on 'The Apprentice'!
Saving Changes...
My experience in IT started in sales, then actual web development. However my transition to PM didn't occur until I spent a couple of years heavily involved in politics. I worked on a large US senate campaign in an IT role and moonlighted on a small local campaign as a co-campaign manager. Then I managed high-profile city mayor campaign. Those 2 years in campaign management gave me the opportunity to transition to full-time IT PM work.
However, I could not have done it I didn't have a good grasp on technology. Saving Changes...
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