Comment by vayeate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vayeate | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a web developer with 5+ years direct professional experience (and probably closer to a decade with freelancing) and my past two roles have been senior level, though the title doesn't mean much other than that I do projects start to finish by myself.

I've been interested in moving into a PM role for the past couple years and it seems like a very difficult transition unless it's done internally at a company big enough to both need the role and for there to be reasonably frequent openings for the role. I've never worked at a company that large before, and I am so so sick of software development that I don't think I can stomach another couple years of it at a new, bigger employer to make that internal transition.

My strategy right now is to find a project management role and then transition from that to product management. But boy this is a difficult job market to find entry level project management roles. I advertise myself as being experienced with project management, which is true - it's been a part of my dev job for years and in freelancing. But after 20+ applications I haven't had a single response. I would have hoped so many years as an engineer would count for more on a resume but I guess not when applying to project or product management roles.

Any advice welcome.

i can't provide any advice, but could you share what makes you sick of software development?

btw maybe not having a masters degree is an impediment in your pm job search. most devs don't have one nor need one but i suspect as with other management roles, there's a higher perceived need for an advanced degree.

Replying from different account:

I'm specifically sick of web development, which is really all I know. I think my extreme distaste for it has also jaded my view on all programming. I recently tried to branch out into ML and AI stuff but the motivation to learn more is simply not there.

I'm tired of (web) development probably because I'm not growing in it anymore. I feel like I've done everything a million times. I always work at small places which means I'm also constantly having to deal with infrastructure and deployment problems as part of my job too. I really cannot force myself to give a shit about the thousandth configuration error message that takes an hour to fix just to get back to where I was before it popped up. Working at smaller places also means maintaining legacy projects that have really obscure technology choices that make it impossible to find resources or other people posting with similar problems. So I wind up having to become familiar with a technology that is dead and no one uses and I will never use again and does nothing to advance my career. I resent every second I spend learning it because of that.

Overwhelmingly my projects are for people who don't really know much about business, technology, or what constitutes a good idea for a project. So my projects are often just death marches where I'm spending months of my life on something that ultimately fails and sits in a repo never to be touched or deployed ever again. This is very demoralizing, as is taking direction from people who have no idea what they're doing - but they're the client and they're the ones paying us, so we gotta do what they want.

As I get older I think I just have less patience for things I find meaningless. I want to find something that I can actually grow in (like a new career direction with PMing) or work in an environment that I feel like has some sort of net positive change for society. It is difficult to find non-profits that are hiring right now, however, and overwhelmingly they want you to have previous non-profit experience too.

The advanced degree option is a good one, but I cannot in good faith spend two years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars (and hundreds of thousands in lost wages) just to get an entry level project management job that pays $50k.

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