I'm a software dev and i've been working corporate america for a decade and i hate it. i hate every second of every day. i've tried applying for non profits and government jobs and the entire job market is total balls. i've been trying to find something else for half a year and 100+ job applications.
I want to do something menial like project management. Something sitting at a desk. Something that isn't very mentally straining like the software engineering I'm doing now.
I want to work with cool people.
I want to work in an environment where I don't have to justify breathing the oxygen in their office.
I want to have a nice boss.
I don't care if the pay is shit.
How can i find something like this? How does one approach a job search if what you care about most is cool coworkers and doesn't care at all what the job is (aside from it being a desk job) or how much it pays?
As someone who did project management and now does product management it's not as menial as you think. The work isn't hard but it boils down to a line of people at your desk all day with dumb questions. You have to context switch every 5 minutes and when you do actually have shit to do the only way to do it is to hide or pretend you're in a meeting so people don't ask you the same dumb questions they ask you every single week.
The grass isn't always greener, trust me. I've done most jobs folks do in tech and it's the same shit in a different context. Finding chill people is the important thing, the job you do is less so
Im ADD as hell so I am good at context switching. I like dumb questions, they're usually easy to answer and you get to feel helpful. I've done PM stuff in my engineering roles and I always thought it was cool and chill and easy.
I'm jelly that you're a product manager. That's really where I want to be but it's pretty impossible to get those roles unless you're working your way towards them internally at an org you've been with for a while. And I've never worked anywhere that had/needed them.
Yeah I worked my way to product specifically. Took a couple of big risks and a big pay cut / career change at a real shitty company to do it but it paid off. Product is tough to get in to since there isn't like one set of skills required for it. I'm very lucky to be where I am. The key is to find your way to a small place that talks about career growth, telling them you want to move into product, and then hoping they keep their end of the bargain.
Hopefully you find a better way in than that hell though
I feel like most product managers get there through a mixture of shit work and luck. I wish I identified it's what I wanted earlier in my life and avoided a decade of shit I don't care about