Booming Career: Programming
One of the best things that one can do for their future is to plan out what they want to do for the rest of their life regarding their job and career. It can be somewhat daunting as a young adult, not knowing what to do after high school. The answer most people say is to go to college, and then you have to decide what career path is best for you. But what if what you chose isn’t the best thing for you. Or maybe companies simply don’t need your kind of expertise. It is important to choose a profession that can be useful in almost any kind of work environment. Well, let me introduce you to the coding environment!
Ever since programming became popular in the late 20th century, there has been an increase of demand for programming related jobs. According to Glassdoor data, 8 of the top 25 popular jobs this year are tech positions, including data scientist, mobile developer, software development manager, and several more. In addition, a report from Burning Glass states that programming jobs are growing 12% faster than other jobs. This is mainly due to our booming digital age in that it requires 5 major tech professions: Information Technology (IT) Workers, Data Analysts, Artists/Designers, Engineers, and Scientists. Burning Glass also found that jobs that require coding skills pay more than $20,000 on average more than other jobs. In addition, nearly half of jobs that pay $58,000 or more require some sort of coding knowledge.
We can see that programming is a very valuable skill in tech related fields, even in workspaces that don’t require such skills. However, having coding skills in your tool box is another bonus for yourself when finding a tech related job. For example, IT jobs (for the most part) don’t require coding experience, but there may be some times where making a quick script might help you solve a problem. However, IT roles do require more specialization regarding computers and systems.
Now, before you go off changing your major to Computer Science, you don’t really need a computer science degree to land a job in a software engineering field. If anything, you can try out some of the free coding programs there are available on the internet, and they’re free! One good example is freeCodeCamp.org, where you can learn how to code, build projects and earn certifications.