Need advice / help on the path to management / business areas / Product Manager. Is there a rough road map?

Question

Project management

Greetings to everyone who decided to look into this thread!

I understand that the community is not very fond of the "want" stories and the creators of a new life, but I'll try my luck.
Briefly - I am 30 years old, I have experience in sales, launching and bringing to profit new enterprises of various directions (not IT, 3 projects in 7 years in one of which I was a co-owner). For personal reasons, I decided to sell the current share in the business and try to move into the IT field.
For more details, here:

spoiler

Обрисую вводные данные: мне 30 лет, 2 высших (экономика, ин. яз); знание английского b1 в данный момент с возможностью вернуть "языковую форму" и за месяца 3 выйти на С1; уверенный пользователь девайсов, ПК, АИС и пр. систем; ровно 0 дней и секунд в программировании, девелопменте, дизайне и т.д.; возможность последующего переезда меня не пугает, а даже наоборот. Нахожусь не в МСК.
По компетенциям:
- есть успешный опыт работы в крупных федеральных компаниях в продажах b2b и b2c;
- 6-7 лет управленческого опыта, в том числе запуск с "0" бизнеса в роли заместителя директора;
- собирал 2 пула сотрудников на разных предприятиях и выводил на выполнение целевых показателей;
- с IT сталкивался только в роли заказчика (сайт, SEO, таргет, внутрення программа, внедрение API).
- макс число под управлением ~ 20 человек.
- считаю, что хорошо могу анализировать конкурентную среду, спрос, недостатки, точки роста;
- достаточно креативен в вопросах необычных решений, совершенсвования и стратегий

• My motives: personal interest in the field, the relevance of the direction, the possibility of a future move to the EC / USA zone, the desire, due to certain circumstances, to restart my career and life.
  
• There is an opportunity to invest (not huge, but sufficient) funds in education, courses, practice, etc.
  
• I have no illusions from the series "become a top in 6 months", but the tangibility of the deadlines matters.
  

I am a person who adequately treats his abilities. Become a freelancer, targetologist, etc. I'm not particularly interested because of personal interests, ambitions, character and perspectives that I want to see.

I chose for myself a potential target position - Product Manager.

What options did I consider? BigData, Programming, DevOps, Mobile development, testing. It is possible to study some of this and reach the proper level, but something does not suit me at all (BigData for example). Yes, and let's be frank - I can become a really good specialist in a narrow technical direction at 35 years old at best.
Efficiency, learning new things, creativity, finding "points of growth", stress resistance - at a high level.

And now the questions I want to ask the connoisseurs:
1. Based on the input - is my choice adequate?
2. How would you advise me to move in this direction?
2. If you need to learn the technical basics - what would you advise, what languages, skills, positions? I am ready to devote time, to study to penetrate to become a mid-june. The question is which direction to move?
3. What is the best springboard to achieve the goal? Testing, web, some languages, marketing, or something else?
4. Links, books, blogs, articles - any information that you think I need to study.
5. Are there any dual-study stories in this area? Or the possibility of an internship with a PM, an assistant to the PM?
6. If someone is ready to talk personally and answer a hundred of my questions, I will be very happy.

I know that there is a lot of text - but I decided to write everything in detail so that it would be more convenient for you. Ready for the hat)
Thanks in advance to everyone who read it and even more thanks to those who answer!

PS For spelling and grammatical errors - please treat indulgently.

Answer 1

Dude, you are already an adult uncle and you ask the jerks for advice, tell you how to pack things in a backpack on which site to buy a ticket to Moscow and how to call him to the airport through Yandex taxi?
How to go to the headhunter, select a worker and respond from it?
You yourself perfectly understand what and how to do, so just do it

Answer 2

For a Product Manager position in a more or less serious company, you need a confirmed budget that you have successfully mastered on a project in the past. If you have good budgets (from 20 million rubles) in your portfolio, even if not in IT, then there are chances, otherwise I doubt it, because where you need to manage a smaller budget, they do without a product manager, and where big - this soft skill is considered the most important.

Answer 3

I understand that the community is not very fond of stories from the series "want"

Many people are here just for the sake of such questions and sit.

I will outline the input data: I am 30 years old, 2 higher (economics, foreign language); knowledge of English b1 at the moment with the ability to return the "language form" and reach C1 in 3 months; confident user of devices, PC, AIS, etc. systems; exactly 0 days and seconds in programming, development, design, etc.; The possibility of a subsequent move does not scare me, but on the contrary. I am not in MSC.
By competencies:
- I have a successful experience in large federal companies in b2b and b2c sales;
- 6-7 years of managerial experience, including starting a business from "0" as a deputy director;
- collected 2 pools of employees at different enterprises and brought them to the achievement of target indicators;
- I came across IT only as a customer (website, SEO, target, internal program, API implementation).
- max number under management ~ 20 people.
- I think that I can well analyze the competitive environment, demand, shortcomings, points of growth;
- quite creative in terms of unusual solutions, improvements and strategies

In short, in It - you are a complete zero. So write - why this sheet?

the relevance of the direction, the possibility of a future move to the EC / USA zone, the desire, due to certain circumstances, to restart career and life.

None of this can be called an adequate reason.

There is an opportunity to invest (not huge, but sufficient) funds in education,

Perfectly.

courses

Terrible.

I have no illusions from the series "become a top in 6 months", but the tangibility of the deadlines matters.

Anywhere from a year to infinity.

I chose for myself a potential target position - Product Manager.
What options did I consider? BigData, Programming, DevOps, Mobile development, testing. It is possible to study some of this and reach the proper level, but something does not suit me at all (BigData for example). Yes, and let's be frank - I can become a really good specialist in a narrow technical direction at 35 years old at best.
Efficiency, learning new things, creativity, finding "points of growth", stress resistance - at a high level.

There is some kind of bullshit - nothing is clear.
Answers:
1) You know better.
2) What?
3) It's not clear. What?
4) I recommend the book "How to Stop Asking Stupid Questions and Start Thinking for Yourself"
5) Some nonsense again...
6) Ah! It's always welcome - freelancing.

PS For spelling and grammatical errors - please treat indulgently.

Or maybe it was worth checking the text before creating a question, no?

Answer 4

quite a difficult task. You can look for projects where you need a second manager, assistant / deputy - there are many such projects.
What you need to know is how a hardware server differs from vps, and that from vps in the cloud, and that from a virtual machine, and that from a container. Why? Because the manager often approves resources in the company and should roughly understand why his project requires so much for test environments and production.
Read about fault tolerance, understand how much you need to put into it depending on your project. You accept responsibility for the risks, they can only be roughly informed from below.
1. Based on the input - is my choice adequate?
30 years old is a young age. Having leadership experience behind you - you can try, but as I wrote above - look for options for a junior manager.
2. How would you advise me to move in this direction?
This is a strange question. If you have opportunities familiar in this topic - you can learn from them. And so - who knows. If you have never written code in your life, but you are an adequate person, then I have seen such leaders, and in principle it is normal. A manager should not be involved in micromanagement, there are team leads for this. And the IT past can both help and hinder, here it is important what kind of person and whether he knows how to prioritize correctly.
2. If you need to learn the technical basics - what would you advise, what languages, skills, positions? I am ready to devote time, to study to penetrate to become a mid-june. The question is which direction to move?
Move towards testing and automation. This will help you understand the production process of a product better, since good testing in a product often takes longer than development. And the manager works more with testers and business analysts - business requirements are discussed with them, sign offs for the product are also discussed with them.
3. What is the best springboard to achieve the goal? Testing, web, some languages, marketing, or something else?
Management, of course.
5. Are there any dual-study stories in this area? Or the possibility of an internship with a PM, an assistant to the PM?
There are many such cases. But in projects from the middle and above, since in small projects a lot of leadership is not required.

Answer 5

The desire to try something new is commendable. And 30 is an excellent age for that. No sarcasm.
But it’s not worth entering a new area from scratch, you are unlikely to want to work for 30 thousand a month. Think about what you are good at, what are your strengths, and proceed from this.
As for the product manager, this position usually requires a technical background, people from other areas are rarely called for such positions.
ps Knock on telegram @alexanderprokhorovich so as not to spam here, maybe we will find common topics)

Answer 6

Throw your bones at the state corporation (looking at the winter), and closer to summer, we’ll see))

Answer 7

My first education is a programmer, but my path went into management, project management.
It all started with communication with clients, building communications, translating from the client language into the language of developers, generating documents, technical specifications, maintaining a database, etc.
After managing the development of web solutions (websites, crm, bots, etc.), I came to the opening of a web studio. I liked selling, working with clients, creating a product. So I came to "Product Manager", when you are responsible for the product, from the idea, solving the pain of the target audience, finding a solution, calculating the financial model, creating an mvp and much more... This is a whole layer of knowledge. Much was easier to study and implement in the IT field, because I have an IT education behind me, understanding how it is being developed, understanding deadlines, and foreseeing problem situations.
Experience of mistakes, fakups, loss of money/project/client, theft, data merging.
I started with projects of 5000-15000 rubles, in 10 years I came to projects with a check of 200 million rubles.
Burnt out. I'm 36, and I have absolutely no desire to do all this.
The choice to become a Product Manager may not be the best one. Go to the course sites, see what they teach in the "Product Manager" course, what you will need to know and be able to do at the end. Ask yourself how much it really is what you need, how much you like it, responds. Because not everyone knows what to do. And it also happens that the vacancy says "Product Manager", but in fact you work as a "Project Manager", or just a manager as a secretary, with pieces of paper.