Designing Your Tech Career Roadmap as a Newbie
New to tech? You should read this.
It still feels surreal to me that I'm blogging about my career in tech. Seven years ago I was pretty sure I only wanted to go to court, representing persons and companies. Yes, you guessed right, I'm a lawyer (who is now transitioning into tech particularly product management ha ha!).
After watching a YouTube video by Yewande Odumosu on Designing a Tech Career Roadmap I 'found' myself. I have chosen my preferred track, product management, well because it aligns with my personality and the qualities I have garnered over the years. I'll share what I have learnt and I hope it inspires you.
DISCOVERING YOURSELF
It's important to evaluate and understand yourself as it helps you put things in perspective.
What kind of a person are you? What are your strengths, weaknesses, values, skills, core principles? What spurs and motivates you? What easily gets you off the bed every morning? Would you rather write or talk?
Asking yourself these self-assessing questions helps you know yourself better and aid you in choosing a specific field and planning your tech career roadmap.
CHOOSING YOUR TRACK - SPECIFIC FIELD
As a techie you're either interested in developer or non-developer roles (you could also be a hybrid).
After discovering yourself, it is much easier to know what path in tech suits you. The answers to those self-assessing questions, would help know if you'd rather code, design or manage a product (amongst other things).
PLANNING YOUR CAREER ROADMAP
A roadmap is a plan or strategy intended to achieve a particular goal. As a tech newbie it is important to have a career roadmap. A career roadmap is a plan that outlines your career path and the steps you need to take to achieve them. It can be used as a guide to help you make decisions about your future while also keeping track of your desired career aspirations.
You can either have a linear roadmap or non-linear. A linear roadmap is pretty straight forward. It's like climbing a ladder knowing where you're headed. For example
Your career roadmap could be non-linear, spontaneous, 'zig-zag' and that's okay too. It mustn't be in a straight pattern.
It's possible to start of as a customer support or product designer, switch to full stack development, become a product manager, be a chief product officer and end up as a CEO.
You can go through a linear trajectory or a series of steps and still end up where you envisioned yourself to be. Either ways you'll find your way to the top.
I'll like to hear what you think about this article and how this helps. Kindly leave a comment.
Cheers.