In 2019, Amazon announced that they were going to invest 700 million dollars in a new employee retraining program. The announcement caught the attention of the entire business community, because the sole purpose of the huge training project was to teach programming and IT know-hows to Amazon employees. Amazon Technical Academy was created as part of the project, which aimed at providing programming knowledge to at least 100 thousand Amazon employees within the next year. This gigantic venture has duly highlighted one of the top priorities of the Silicon Valley in recent times- programming skills for all their employees.
This leads us to one simple fact- knowing how to code is the most useful skill to have in the 21st century and recruiting companies need this skill. Not only for technical people, programming knowledge is useful for every employee as it increases productivity and performance for every role. It can significantly increase your probability of getting hired and help you perform better at work. And with the availability of free online materials, learning how to code can be easier than you think.
BENEFITS OF CODING FOR NON-TECH PEOPLE
A common stereotype among people is that- coding is very hard and only software engineers should do it. But in fact, learning a programming language is fairly easy. With only 2/3 months’ effort, you can easily learn a programming language and start writing short programs to help you in routine tasks. In every type of job, there are some repetitive tasks that consumes a lot of time, like files compiling, data cleaning and organizing, financial analysis, forecasting etc. If you have even basic knowledge of coding, you can easily write short programs that can complete these repetitive tasks within seconds. There is a platform used by the programming community called ‘Github’, where programmers often share programs written by them for automating routine office tasks. Even a beginner programmer can access ‘Github’ and use these programs to make his life easier. This is a magic skill that you can use to save time, at the same time, impress your boss.
But this is not the only benefit of coding. Learning programming can improve your tech literacy. You will be introduced to many new technologies that you previously were ignorant of. If you are from a non-technical background, programming knowledge will allow you to communicate better with tech-teams of the company. You can perform as an effective liaison between the management and technical teams like web development team, database management team etc. Also, learning programming can improve your problem-solving skills.
PROGRAMMING FOR BUSINESS GRADUATES
Leaning how to code can be especially useful for business graduates. Coding knowledge improves your capability of communicating with tech-teams in the company, which is an important skill for any business graduate to have.
Fahim, a business graduate from a reputed university, is currently working as analytics engineer at Intelligent Machines Limited. He learnt programming by himself through online courses. When asked about the relevance of programming in businesses, he said, “Even though I am a business major, I’ve always wanted to get into the tech side of business, and in that regard, programming has allowed me to land a job I’m comfortable with. I solve business problems not just with intuition but with data backing up those solutions. Knowledge in Python or R helps you use these data to make important decisions. And this is a skill I urge all business students to develop as the world increasingly adopts data-driven business processes.”
Shuvo is also a business graduate from a renowned university. Despite being a business student, he learnt programming from his own interest and is now working as an analytics engineer at Intelligent Machines Limited. He said, “I think programming can be a great tool to impress your boss at work. Previously, in my third year, I used to work for a marketing agency, where I was once assigned a task of sorting files. The task was a tedious, repetitive work, which could take hours if done manually. I wrote a short program using Python which could do that whole task within seconds. My boss was pretty much surprised when I showed him the program.”
DOES HAVING CODING SKILLS IMPACT YOUR INCOME?
According to a study by job market analytics firms, Burning Glass and Oracle Academy- half of all jobs in the US categorized as the top income quartile jobs (paying $57,000 or more) require some level of coding. Zach Sims, CEO and co-founder of CodeAcademy- a programming education platform, said in an interview in 2017 that professionals who took training from his platform claimed to have had pay raises on average of $5,000. So, coding skills should definitely contribute in boosting your income. Also, if you are a fresh graduate with coding skills, you are more likely to get hired in this competitive job market. A World Economic Forum report of 2016 said that jobs that require coding skills are growing 50% faster than the rest of the market.
EMBARKING ON THE PATH OF LEARNING
There are tons of courses on online learning platforms like- Coursera and Edex that business students can learn programming from. These platforms have courses on programming offered by some of the most reputed universities in the world. According to Edex, the top 3 most popular courses on the platform are basically programming courses for non-tech people, teaching languages like- Python, Javascript, C, SQL and many others. The fourth most popular course of 2020 on Coursera is a course named- “Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)”, which is offered by the University of Michigan, USA. This shows that a large number of students are using these sites to learn programming from scratch. These courses have different difficulty levels for both beginners and masters, so you can easily take a beginner level course and gradually move up to harder level courses. The beginner level courses are specially designed for learners who have never coded before. Using these platforms, mostly for free, you can easily embark on your journey of learning how to code.
WHICH LANGUAGE TO LEARN
But there are a lot of programming languages available which are useful in different ways. For example, Java and JavaScript are convenient for website and app development, R and Python are most effective in doing mathematical calculations, while SQL might be the best choice for database management. But if you don’t want to specialize in any particular field, maybe you should learn a general-purpose language like Python. If you are still confused, you can check out Tiobe’s official website – which publishes an annual index or ranking of programming languages according to their industry demand.
DO EMPLOYERS RECOGNIZE PROGRAMMING AS AN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR ALL?
Around the globe, recruiters of almost all big companies appreciate their employees’ coding skills- no matter what the role. Joanne Lipman, the editor-in-chief of USA Today- a newspaper with 110-million-circulation across print and digital, said in an interview in 2017, “Learn how to code.Make sure that you take some classes. Not heavy-duty computer science necessarily, but learn development and programming. Learn to work with data and data visualization.”
In Bangladeshi companies as well, top management are gradually recognizing the importance of coding skills for non-technical personnel. Though managers in local, smaller firms are yet to fully acknowledge the importance of this skillset, technology-oriented big companies and multi-national firms highly evaluate non-technical persons with coding knowledge.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a huge paradigm shift has occurred at the job market. Companies that previously invested heavily in information technology and automation, got a huge boost during the pandemic. With this example being set, all business organizations are now serious about developing their own technological capability. In this context, programming knowledge is now even more important for business professionals. With the abundance of free learning materials online, it is expected that more and more students from our country would learn programming, especially students from non-technical background or business background.
by Sk. Ezaz Ahmed
