Why Learning To Program Can Give You An Edge In The Job Market

Not long ago, coding was considered something exotic done only by those that are really into computers. Most people saw coding as useful only to those that planned a life in the computer profession.

Things have changed radically over the years and programming is now considered a critical skill if you want to progress in many careers. Employers have taken the willingness to give premium payment for those employees who have coding and programming abilities.

Knowing this, you might start wondering if learning how to program is something that you should consider. There are several questions you might ask. How long would it take you to learn about programming? What programming languages should you study? Is it worth it? Knowing the benefits of programming and coding might answer these questions for you.

Benefits of learning how to program

Knowledge about technical language
Have you heard about C/C++? Have you encountered PHP and SQL? These may seem like jumbled letters but one of the benefits of learning how to program is being able to understand how to use these coding languages in different tasks.

There are about 700 coding languages in total, but the vast majority of work is done in just a few of them. Learning one or two of these programming languages will give you an advantage in the job market. Python, Java/Java Script and C/C++ are the three most popular languages. There are coding classes that will help you study these languages. Working with these languages will make you gain a better understanding of technical terminologies and will make it easy for you to grasp basic software that was once beyond your scope and understanding even if you never become a programmer (or coder) yourself.

Increased earning potential and career flexibility
All of us always find ways to bring home a little bit more bacon, and one of the most obvious benefits of learning how to program and code is the earning potential that you will get out of it. Many programmers earn over $100,000 a year and the job market is strong, especially for those with popular languages.

Being able to know how to code increases earnings potential because your employer will be able to give you programming projects to handle instead of looking at external candidates to hire. There are also many cases where you will never need to program yourself, but your background will allow you to work with internal teams (or external consultants) to work on projects. Coding also encourages rigorous, logical problem-solving skills that will make you a better analyst in other job functions.

So you should expect a potential employer will compensate you for doing these programming projects as part of your salary or even as a bonus. This will also help you with your career success since this added programming knowledge will prove how you are an asset to the company. This can be a way to fast-track your promotion as this added knowledge will give them more reason not to lose you.

Also, having these skills will help you be more open to new areas of opportunities in your career since having these programming skills increase your flexibility as a candidate in a fast-shifting digital economy. It increases not only your employment career options but also your ability to start your own business. Learning how to program can give you an amazing path of having the freedom and earning a living doing freelance if you want to go that career route. You can start by accepting a few side projects to help in updating your portfolio, building your side hustle, and eventually making it your new career.

High demand for programming-related jobs
If you are in a job related to programming, or if you want to make a career shift, then there are a lot of opportunities for you. The demand for programming and coding-related work remains strong. Employment growth projections are higher than almost any other field for coding and programming-relation positions which include web developers, network and computer systems administrators, database administrators, and software developers. The projections for these positions are ranging from 9% to 21% employment growth compared to the national average of 5% growth in the coming years. There are also a lot of emerging opportunities not only for computer programming jobs but also for jobs that combine programming skills with other job titles.

Increase potential to be hired
Have you been applying for jobs lately and are you looking for a way to make yourself a competitive candidate? Learning about multiple programming languages will help. According to recent studies, having academic knowledge about programming and an understanding of coding makes major companies see you as a potential employee because programming is one of the most in-demand skills they look for when assessing candidates. Having programming and coding skills will open a lot of opportunities for you including building a company’s website, creating software, and helping your future employers in analyzing their data and help their business such as understanding more about their target market.

Knowing programming and coding can also be useful to jobs that you least expect to use it. It is not only limited to highly technical kinds of jobs. Some software like Python can be used to code advertising algorithms. If you are in an advertising role and know about programming, your company will be able to save on the cost by maximizing your programming knowledge instead of investing in hiring another specialist. Being able to program or code can also allow you to automate menial tasks to save time and make work easier allowing you to focus and your other team members to the more important stuff and reduce lag time. (It will also make you more comfortable in simpler tasks like creating scripts in excel.)

Improved problem-solving skills
Programming and coding involve methods and logic in breaking down, approaching, and solving problems. Learning to program and code definitely will affect teaching you how to think. Basically, programming is about assigning a computer to do a task based on a logical set of guidelines that you have outlined. Being able to program and code means being able to break problems down into small discrete parts and figuring out how each one is affecting the other. Being able to do this helps you in deciding what areas of problems to prioritize first and start solving these problems from there. Understanding logic at a deeper level will improve your problem-solving proficiency greatly.

In summary, learning to program has a lot of benefits. Most importantly, you don’t have to be an expert on it or expect that you will become a full-time coder as you develop these skills. But having the right knowledge set can improve many aspects of your career. It makes you more marketable for new jobs or rising within firms. In order to maximize the benefits that you will get from programming, first you should identify your priorities. Is it for career advancement? Do you want a career shift? Or you just want to simply acquire additional knowledge? This will also tell you whether you want a few courses under your belt or need go through a full-fledged program. No matter what your goal or how far your studies go, learning to program can give you the edge.