The most profitable ventures are always at a junction of two tings. In your case a junction of someone who can code on one hand and who can see the point of another coder and negotiate to the agreement on the other hand is very valuable in any large company. Product development in large companies always requires more coordination between different teams than is available, so you just can't go wrong by targeting this niche. Do both and you will do well.
As a matter of staging, get a coding job in a large company. Straight out of college the expectations will be fairly low for you, so meeting coding expectations would be easy. Use the spare time to seek out right-sized communication gaps in projects that are important for your skip-level manager, suggest improving it, provide your budget (I will spend one week on this, this and this) and make a tiny but clearly measurable progress. If you make a decent effort you will be noticed, if you succeed after first three attempts you will be fast-tracked.
Remember that engineers respect other engineers, so if you start with coding and especially a coding achievement you will come from the position of strength compared to any regular program/project manager.
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The most profitable ventures are always at a junction of two tings. In your case a junction of someone who can code on one hand and who can see the point of another coder and negotiate to the agreement on the other hand is very valuable in any large company. Product development in large companies always requires more coordination between different teams than is available, so you just can't go wrong by targeting this niche. Do both and you will do well.
As a matter of staging, get a coding job in a large company. Straight out of college the expectations will be fairly low for you, so meeting coding expectations would be easy. Use the spare time to seek out right-sized communication gaps in projects that are important for your skip-level manager, suggest improving it, provide your budget (I will spend one week on this, this and this) and make a tiny but clearly measurable progress. If you make a decent effort you will be noticed, if you succeed after first three attempts you will be fast-tracked.
Remember that engineers respect other engineers, so if you start with coding and especially a coding achievement you will come from the position of strength compared to any regular program/project manager.