Poll: Electrical engineer (more like computer engineer) desperately trying to get out of construction and reset career. What do? I'm an electrical engineering major that somehow ended up in construction and have been a project manager for almost 8 years. I've done heavy civil infrastructure, industrial control and building projects with quite a bit of telcom infrastructure, field device deployment and mega project experience as well. I am good at this work but feel like I got into this industry by mistake. My BSEE and MSEE degrees' focus was computer engineering and it feels as though if I want to switch industries now is my last chance to do at 35, but realistically the only tech related jobs I even get recruiter calls for are data center electrical PM and IT infrastructure PM at this point. I have a PMP for what it's worth. There's also one technical PM role I'm interviewing for with a start-up that leverages my PM skills, DoD project environment experience and cloud certs that I got over the past few months (AWS Solution architect associate and Certified Kubernetes Administrator), and I'd be stoked if there's more roles like that out there to improve my odds of breaking into tech. I can wear many hats, good with people, can ELI5 tech to stakeholders all day, can code some and can do devops-y things but no professional experience. I am also considering going the SWE apprenticeship route to realign my career but most big tech apprenticeship programs are closed now. I applied to an electrical construction PM at Tesla on a whim just to see if I'd get any response and now I've got a screening call scheduled. The job would require me to relocate to the Bay Area. What kind of TC can I expect? and is there any possibility to transfer internally to an engineering/technical PM position to work on control systems or software projects after a year or two? Thanks 8YOE Current TC 130k Edit: Got an interview scheduled with Amazon for a datacenter role. I guess it makes sense to pursue option 1 for now. #tesla #career #projectmanager #amazon #amazonaws
I think now is not the best time to transition into a new career where a lot of experienced hires will be vying for the same jobs.
Valid point. My rationale is that on a long enough timeline all of my options will be possible with varied odds of success but some of them will require taking actions now to become executable 6-12 months from now I just feel like I should be doing and trying something, anything now to avoid wasting any more time.
When companies are pressured to shed staff, the least productive members of the team go first. This is a scary experience for someone right out of school, but could be heartbreaking for someone with a lot more to lose. Do what you have to do to be happy, but if you have people in your life counting on you to bring home the bacon, make sure you have your house in order. 35 is not that old.