So I am potentially going into college for IT management, or computer science but going IT management as a career path anyway, and just wanted some advice.
For the past 2 years, my uncle has been teaching me web development coding, which has been awesome. I've also on my own done a little bit in the Android side of things.
I've closely followed hardware/software for around 5-6 years, so I am very familiar/savvy with PC's in general.
Despite my coding experience, I am not someone who can sit down and do it for 8-12 hours a day. I'm actually a pretty good people person, so doing IT management seems like a great balance of: programming, and communicating in the business world.
TL;DR version: So for going into IT management, what kind of stuff should I learn/focus on? I want to be as prepared as possible, thanks guys!
Take this with a pinch of salt, its from my own jaded experiences :-)
IT Managers and Project Managers who work in IT generally come from two backgrounds - they either worked their way from the bottom, usually getting to their management role by taking on responsibilities and doing the shit others don't want to do and sorting out the problems others create.
or...
They somehow side step in from another field or with limited IT experience but are experts at climbing the greasy poll, stabbing others in the back and throwing them under buses whilst covering their own arses.
Definitely be one of the first and don't expect to be in a management role from day 1. A couple of years proving yourself as a good techie will usually see you get promoted to a senior or team lead role quite quickly in most companies and a management role shortly after.
If you also have good technical and leadership abilities you will go far.
I'm on year 2 of an IT Supervisor position myself and I wasn't sure how to reply to this post since I didn't take any IT education after High School. I have to agree with at least what you've said about the points that help most with succeeding in this kind of position, it mostly just takes a lot of knowing how your local team works and getting all of those skills and attributes to work properly together and successfully. As an IT manager make sure that you're ready to have others treat you like Sisyphus, there will be constant challenges in all elements of your job and finding a field that you enjoy working in can make the difference in meeting challenges that are frustrating and seem like a waste of time vs challenges where you enjoy putting in the effort it takes you to get to the top of the hill.