Tech leadership

After years in the IT field as a software developer, I have been, for the first time, interested in switching from the development field to the project management part of the business. I joined Proakatemia in 2021 not because of the leadership part of the degree but because of social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship has always been my passion, and I thought studying entrepreneurship would be a first step towards it. For my surprise, the school does not support such kind of entrepreneurship style. At first, this news was quite frustrating for my journey as a member of the community. Even with a very demotivational future perspective, I didn’t give up on the degree. I decided to get the best out of the course by trying different areas that the Proakatemia community as a launchpad platform can provide to its students. Entrepreneurship itself has been a lot of fun and challenging at the same time in a good proportion. Recently, leadership has been taking my attention due to my personal observation in the work environment and also in the team SYNTRE. My first test was taking SYNTRE’s marketing department leadership. After everything ran smoothly and the team delivered the settled goals, I thought it was time to take on a bigger challenge. The next step was to take the BL (business leader) position in SYNTRE. So far, leading a diverse group of 13 people has been challenging and mind-opening to different perspectives. One learning so far is that only intuition is not enough to lead successfully. Every tool and method have been supportive of the BL journey so far.

My expectation now is to be able to connect my learnings of leadership to my software development work. In the development world, it’s common to make the mistake of switching from programming to a management role when wishing to take the next step in the career. Many times, it would be more interesting for a developer to be a specialist rather than taking a management role. Although I do feel this would be a career, I would like to pursue other than getting deep as an specialist in one tech field.