seekingcharlie

My older brother has worked in retail his whole life, mostly in supermarkets. He's had a managerial role but the career path and salary has never been great and he's often worked graveyard shifts. He understandably has felt very unfulfilled and depressed with his life.

He has always been really into computers and I've begged him for years to try and angle his way into tech. I'm a UI/UX designer and PM myself, so I know it's possible but I'm also aware that I could be seeing through rose-colored glasses here.

I've offered to start training him in UI/UX design weekly but I'm not sure what the best long-term path would be for him/me to focus on. Do you have any recommendations for him?

I'm a UI/UX designer and product manager. I'm very experienced with HTML and CSS and good enough at SQL for what I've needed as a PM. I've worked in several engineering teams and am often opening PRs to refactor CSS or for easier tickets, like text changes, or responsive improvements. I've also built a bunch of custom Wordpress sites as a freelancer but I hardly know PHP in isolation.

I want to take my skills a step further and be able to contribute to building something. I'd eventually love to build a side-project of my own.

Considering my experience, would React be a good place for me to start? I don't know JS apart from using basic Jquery libraries on websites. What about Rails? Should I do a bootcamp?

FWIW, my current company's stack is Laravel and Mithril but we may be moving to React soon. Should I learn those first?

I work at a successful (but young) startup in a crowded space. I was an early full-time employee (#4) for 2.5 years, resigned in Oct 2016, but after a break, I started consulting for them full-time again, which I've been doing up until now. As of now, I am a consultant for the company and bill a daily rate.

The product is built for SMBs. I want to start a related product but targeting a niche market and built around only one feature that the company offers today.

Am I allowed to do this?