There are many things that senior engineers and managers do well in IT industry among which few are listed below:
- Architecture
- Presales
- Solutioning
- Debugging and solving problems
- Exploring new technologies around the areas they have learned in the past
- Analysis of scenarios
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Setting up processes
- Team Management
- Digital Marketing & Sales
Some things that they don’t do well:
- Put in long hours in support & maintenance
- Explore completely new areas in which they have not worked before
- Testing
- Programming
- Learning new trends and technologies
If you are born in 1980s or before, you would have become a manager in IT industry by now. In this case, at times many stop updating themselves.
Below are some pointers on how to update oneself and rebuild your career:
- Instead of only reading about domains and technologies, experiment with software practically
- Setup a small consulting / teaching / area specific business where you have passion, create a website, host some parts on traditional shared servers and some on AWS / Azure / etc.
- Do some freelancing on the sides
- Meet startups, founders, discuss their problems and offer free consulting hours to solve their issues
- Network with local young IT professionals and see the latest apps and trends
- Attend various MeetUps in your area
- Pick up a new programming language and product
- Try out Linux and other open source projects from SourceForge, GitHub, Apache Foundation, etc.
- Take up courses from Coursera, edX, Udemy and similar portals
- Go for further education in part time, online or distance mode – courses like MBA, MCA, Executive MBA, MSc, MS online from Universities across the world, MTech, PhD, etc. which can be done with your job
- Follow industry professionals in upcoming technologies and domains on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook or other social media platforms to get updates
Unless one keeps up with the times they risk becoming obsolete !!
