My career has progressed into management without a deep technical background. My primary background is in programming (Ada, Fortran, Pascal, Assembly), but I took on my first management position about 8 years ago and really haven’t coded since. Now I have experience managing software development, networks, help desk, configuration mgmt, and integration mgmt, and have picked up basic information along the way, but now my programming skills are out-of-date. I feel my lack of current hands-on is hindering my job search. I want to continue in management eventually to the CIO level. I have a BS in CIS and an MBA in computer resources and info mgmt.
What’s the best way for me to gain experience and training to bolster my hands-on skills? Go into consulting? Pursue certification? Try to return to a more technical position? Has anyone else faced this situation and did you resolve it? How? Or is this not really a problem? Am I being overly sensitive to the situation? I’d love to hear advice from experienced managers. Reply here or e-mail bmossing@ureach.com. Thanks!