Sainath's Advice on Sunday, April 29, 2012 :
Hi,
I cannot really comment on Base24 and Tandem as I do not have an understanding of the same. But a niche skill is always a 2 edged sword - on one hand there are very few people in the area so there is a certain degree of job security. At the same time, volume of open opportunities available to a person is on the lower side.
Regarding project management, I can say this - be it .Net or Java or any other area, any project manager should have spent a sufficient number of years in real technical work i.e. coding in the area for him or her to be really effective. Project management is not just about co-ordination and planning. Daily decision making is a key component of project management and one can take good decisions only if one understands thoroughly what one is dealing with and is able to separate facts from individual perceptions. If you see any failed project, it is usually a management failure and the root cause is some bad decision taken in the past. In case your husband wishes to become a .Net PM he will first need to understand .Net at a good level of detail and then step into it. There is another school of thought that project managers need not be technically inclined at all but I do not subscribe to the same.
Regards,
Sainath S,
www.ugain.info