Why is it Important For Working Professionals to Constantly Upskill in Coding?

Introduction

Coding is fun and encourages individuals to become more creative. When you are coding, it requires you to think about different problems and provide new solutions to challenges constantly. This reflects in any field of work, especially when you can come up with tailored solutions which are highly innovative in nature, for whichever organisation you are currently working in.

This makes you an immensely valuable asset to the company. Coding projects, especially when taken up in an order of increasing difficulty, cultivate one’s mind and allow the individual to use complex approaches to tackle the problem at hand. Developers and programmers earn very respectable salaries throughout the globe, and it is worth it to acquire coding skills and join this industry.

If you are already in general-purpose computing, networking or software engineering, you can upskill yourself in order to move onto System Design, Cloud Architecture, Project Management and other senior positions such as a senior developer or senior programmer. Upskilling yourself facilitates a constant upward movement where you find yourself assigned managerial job roles sooner rather than later.

Why is it Important to Upskill in Coding?

Firstly, coding can not only be used for technical roles but for other jobs that do not require coding. For instance, you are empowered with the ability to automate a production line or an operational process. It is also very effective to think like a coder when working with analytics or marketing campaigns.

And more than anything, you are able to collaborate easily with other technical members of your team, thus improving the effectiveness of projects you are working on. Upskill training in coding is especially useful when you are already a working professional, thus allowing your career to reach new heights and give you a variety of choices.

Here are some reasons why you should consider learning additional skills or upgrading your current skill set. 

• Coding allows you to develop improved logical thinking abilities. 

If you try improving your coding skills or learn new coding skills, as a result, you are made to use algorithms and logic to solve problems and create programs. These promote finding out more logical approaches to solve the various issues, thus improving your brain’s capacity and training your logical ability. This is beneficial not just for programming but in professional life as well. Coding fundamentally allows you to think more and get better at problem-solving. The more you practice and learn, the better you get at identifying problems, breaking things up, and putting pieces together for solving any kind of problem thrown at you.

• Become a better programmer in every way.

Writing straightforward or clean code is an art and is appreciated everywhere you go. Rather than complex, big or even clever code, clean code is much easier to work on, manipulate and maintain. Simple code is easier to troubleshoot and verify, also allowing easier collaboration. Thus, the more you upskill yourself in coding, the better you get at being a solid programmer in all aspects. Problem-solving skills are great, but you must also be efficient and well-versed enough to determine the best approach out of the many solutions for a problem.

• Digitisation of your own concepts.

With better coding skills, you will have the ability to even create and maintain your own application. You can create and deploy something completely with your own hands. You can digitise your models and ideas any time you wish, getting the option to start your own business whenever you desire. You can even create subscription-based services or build custom software for others. Upskilling also promotes innovation and the increased capacity to house profitable concepts. 

• Upgrade your position and get great career opportunities.

By upskilling, you will have access to much better job roles and the best growth opportunities. You will become highly valuable within your own organisation and even to other organisations, thus proving helpful if you choose to switch companies. You can start applying to the companies that you always wanted to join or look for better-paying job roles. Senior roles pay extremely well, so do some specialised fields.

For example, a principal software engineer earns Rs. 22,38,002 on average annually in India. Senior and principal developers adept in Agile Software Development, NoSQL, Python, Linux, Ruby on Rails or Azure earn massive compensations globally. Cloud Architects in India who have upskilled themselves in Azure or AWS earn respectable salaries of Rs. 19,00,000 per annum on average as well. System design specialists too, get handsome remunerations, an average of Rs. 17,00,000 annually in this massively IT-centric country.

Improving your skill set makes way for more valuable job roles that allow you to have better control of your career or allow you to choose the career of your choice. Learning new skills open up more chance for collaboration and provides more choices in your professional life.

• Increase fluency, agility and avoid redundancy. 

Even if you do not require dedicated coding practice, you must keep integrating your skills and acquire new skills in order to stay sharp. You can choose to become more fluent in the core elements within the language of your choice such as Python and Java, or, you might wish to learn something new such as JavaScript, Scala, R or Ruby on Rails.

Upskilling provides you multiple choices to choose from and also gives you the chance to improve your current skill as well while staying updated with the current norms and technologies. As a matter of fact, you might be an excellent developer, however, with the rate of advancement, your skills and the technology you use might start to get outdated.

Languages, IDEs and computing, in general, keep changing constantly, improving themselves for the better. Thus, upskilling is important to not fall behind the times and to avoid a skills gap. Learning the latest technologies such as blockchain, analytics, AI and Machine Learning can prove to be very helpful, as we are growing fonder of their applications in our daily lives.

How to Upskill Yourself?

Here is how you can upskill yourself:

1. Enrol on a standalone coding course: You can join a course to upskill yourself such as an expansive course in Machine Learning. For instance, most working professionals enjoy massive transitions from their current jobs within the first year of finishing specialised courses such as this particular course. If you already are an expert in Python but you wish to learn Java, you can choose a holistic Java course such as this as well. If you wish, you can sit for scholarship exams in order to enrol into upskill courses for free.
2. Join a Coding Bootcamp: Joining a boot camp for upskilling your coding skills is also a great idea. You can easily learn a lot from in a highly orchestrated manner coding boot camps that will allow you to immediately put your newly acquired skills to good use. Ninjas Career Camp is a great boot camp for improving your abilities while securing placement opportunities to get you the dream job you want. You can also choose personalised or tailored career tracks that are relevant to the job role you desire.
3. Computer Science or Programming Degree programs: Joining a degree program is also a choice for working professionals as many good institutes now allow flexible learning and distance learning. However, degree programs take up a lot of time and might become a burden due to working and studying for good results at the same time. Thus, this is an option but not recommended for working professionals who have a job of work pressure. This is also very expensive as compared to taking up an online course or joining a coding boot camp.
4. Self-learn and work in projects: Learn as much as possible through courses, communities, books and academic material and then participate in projects that can give you relevant experience. The key here is to choose a project that can be tackled during your free time and can help you acquire the necessary skills. However, the experience will only be valid if it comes from an organisation, project or company that is well recognised. You are even able to take the help of your team members and seniors when you are involved in a side-project.

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaway

Coding empowers you. The better we get at coding, the better we understand modern technology and services. By upskilling, you will not need to rely on others to solve or troubleshoot complex problems but you will have the ability to do it yourself with ease.

Coding is required to power the systems behind every sector such as education, health, marketing, finance, entertainment, and production, thus, having advanced coding skills can never go to waste.