
Ask HN: How can a elementary school teacher transition into tech? - JobsForTeachers
My girlfriend is an elementary school teacher. Money always seems to be a worry - Teachers just don&#x27;t get paid enough in the bay area. She&#x27;s interested in doing project management or even data . What&#x27;s the best way for her to pivot into tech? Both her degrees are in education and it seems to be nearly impossible to pick up a junior PM job without 3+ years of experience.
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synaptc
Something she might want to consider is entering the tech industry as
QA/Tester.

Typically, the barrier of entry is lower for QA than roles such as PM. With
the right opportunity, she will get a lot of experience working with tech
teams and gain some insight into how to be an efficient PM. And the money can
be pretty good too.

I was on a client where, over the course of 2-3 years, one of the QA testers
transitioned to a BA/Scrum Master role. She constantly stepped outside of her
role and helped with management.

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svennek
It seems to me (without knowing much about the bay area hiring), that she
should look for an entry into a company, where she can use her existings
skills (which I would assume is mostly presenting stuff clearly)...

Maybe something like internal documentation or the like. Then find a company,
that lets it's employees grow (they do exists) and slowly pivot over to her
end goal.

The reason most companies wants experienced PMs is that it is not nearly as
simple as the books suggest. And not being technical makes it even harder to
be a technical PM.

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itamarst
Second what svennek said: get your foot in the door in a company that supports
employees changing roles over time.

In addition to technical writing, another potential position is training.
Teaching children isn't the same as teaching adults, but many of the skills
will transfer.

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znpy
> Both her degrees are in education and it seems to be nearly impossible to
> pick up a junior PM job without 3+ years of experience.

Well it's quite a jump, going from teaching at an elementary school to doing
project management. No wonder she's having a hard time finding a company
willing to let her do such a jump.

Imho, if she wants to get into tech, she should at least get to understand
what sub-field she is interested in and then join pretty much any company
willing to hire her and work her way up.

You know... acquire those 3+ years of experience.

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matt_s
Well if you consider doing lesson plans a project with the goal of students
passing year end tests then that is experience. The words are different for
education vs PM fields but the activities are similar that a teacher has to go
through to plan out 40 weeks of educational material.

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bstre
I did this. PM is one route and I did explore that at length. I found the same
limits. Instead I went into an area of healthcare technology that required
someone who understood technology and curriculum. In my case the entry point
was telemedicine. This led me to other technologies and I am now focused on
what is called population health data and technology. Healthcare needs smart
people who understand how humans use technology and how that translates to how
people learn to use technology.

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jtchang
Hi! I'm one of the founders of Literator
([http://literatorapp.com/](http://literatorapp.com/)). Transitioning from
teaching to project management is going to be tough without any experience as
many have echo'ed. We aren't actively looking for people right now as we are
bootstrapped but I'd still love to chat with her if she is interested. E-mail
is in my profile.

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tabeth
The obvious path is educational tech. Has she explored that?

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user5994461
>>> impossible to pick up a junior PM job without 3+ years of experience.

Of course, managing projects is not a task assigned to junior, so there is no
junior jobs in that.

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thepratt
Is moving away from the bay area out of the question?

