InsideTech

If you want to start developing leadership skills in your first job, here’s Lindsey Pollak’s advice: Begin with your eyes and ears. That’s what she did in her first role as a program coordinator for the American Woman’s Economic Development Corp. in Stamford, Connecticut. “My pay was very low, so my terrific boss - the executive director of the organization - ...

Product management vs. Project management Posted on September 24, 2007 by Jeff Lash · 10 Comments If you want to be a bad product manager, confuse product management with project management. The words are so close because the two concepts are so similar. Product managers should manage projects since they need to ensure that the projects get done. They’re both management ...

All savvy product managers are quick to master the art of making trade-offs. But when the product you manage is part of integrated solution, balancing the needs of colleagues and customers is not just good business, says Avid Technology's Karin Monsler. "It's a survival skill." The product she manages, Avid Unity Media Services, is just one of more than a dozen ...

Management of projects and people requires specialized skill and a certain degree of risk... Moving into management typically means spending less time working directly with technology and honing those purely technical skills. For some technology professionals, this is a scary and difficult proposition. However, for many, assuming a management position is the natural progression in their career. Developing the skills and ...

When you are looking to make the Big Leap—the one that puts you closer to the power centers of a business or organization—the interview process will likely be different from what you've experienced before. The more senior the person or people you're interviewing with, the more definite their ideas are likely to be about what they're looking for. They know that ...

You might think that changing your technology specialty wouldn’t be nearly as difficult as making a wholesale career change. After all, expertise in one area of IT should have some relevance in another, right? That’s true enough, but it doesn’t mean that making a transition within IT is easy to pull off. Far from it. Changing IT career tracks - technical ...

You feel like you’re learning something while you’re being taught, but once your tech training is over, you realize the information didn’t stay with you. Now you’re staring at the screen desperately trying to remember what the trainer told you to do to unlock this wonder of technology called your computer. If you find yourself in this situation every time you ...

You’ve heard that your base salary is largely determined by your education level – but did you ever wonder exactly how much education matters? If you’ve got enough smarts, it shouldn’t matter whether or not you have formal training – right? Wrong. Or at least, it's not always that simple. As job scarcity continues to drive more competition to each open ...

During the boom, techies with in-demand skills might have been offered a job after a perfunctory interview. Now employers are increasingly selective, so technology professionals - even those with years of experience - must face facts. To get hired you need to become a pro not just at coding Unix or C++, but at selling yourself to companies besieged with resumes. ...

Managing people isn't easy. It's especially tough if you've never done it before. And it's harder still if you're a first-time IT manager. That's the opinion of psychologist Richard Hagberg, president of the Hagberg Consulting Group, a Foster City, California-based company that develops training programs for the high tech industry. Hagberg doesn't mince words when talking about the shortcomings of newly ...

Today's managers are charged with getting the most out of workers no matter what. But the reality is that many managers must coax top performances from their employees while working with a minimal budget that may require salary freezes; cuts in benefits, bonuses or perks; reductions in hours; or even layoffs. If you're faced with a less-than-optimal budget situation, follow these ...