[HN Gopher] How to excel in tech without learning to code
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How to excel in tech without learning to code
Author : jseliger
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-01-28 16:49 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (future.a16z.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (future.a16z.com)
| pkdpic wrote:
| Id like to believe theres a potential future where every human is
| a software engineer, and makes art or music or something. Also
| maybe there's solar powered blimps.
| chaostheory wrote:
| I don't feel that you need to code well, but it would help if you
| actually understand the very basics of programming. There are so
| many quick, free to use, and easy to understand resources now;
| like games, that I feel that there are only poor excuses for
| actively avoiding not learning to code.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >How to excel in tech without learning to code
|
| Idk, read Steve Jobs' biography. Passion and dedication are
| powerful forces for any type of success not only Computer Tech
| success.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| this is a great read if you are an "Individual Contributor"
| programmer and want to stop coding and be a manager someday. What
| do I do with my time if not coding is such a hard transition to
| make. Because as a developer you already know everything in this
| article. Now just practice doing stuff to help the org with all
| this knowledge.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| It's funny, because in a sense tech people and non tech people
| have the same problem. Non tech folks want to get closer to the
| tech and tech folks want to get closer to the business.
|
| Just like you can a non-technical person and not understand the
| tech, a technical person has the same problem of understanding
| the tech but not the underlying business decisions.
|
| I've actually been working on this at work. Figuring out the
| right level to bring people over to the other side. I want to
| introduce my non technical coworkers to the code so it doesn't
| overwhelm them but I also want to expose my coders to the
| business side in a way where they won't get overwhelmed
| ozim wrote:
| What about the people who don't want and don't care about the
| other side.
|
| I see business focused people who don't understand basic
| operations of a web browser - where most of the business is
| running via web apps...
|
| I see developers who don't want to attend any meetings
| because they would rather spend time coding and then if
| someone delivers a screenshot with red underlining that was
| supposed to well underline they implement literally what is
| on the screenshot...
|
| I would like to hire only people who want to "work with all
| to deliver value for the customers" but it is not easy to get
| only people like that.
| thesimon wrote:
| I really enjoy working like that as a developer, but it's
| sometimes difficult to find companies working like that.
|
| The product owner is supposed to eliminate all
| developer/customer contact and know just the right
| solutions it seems like.
| User23 wrote:
| For me the issue with the business side isn't that it's
| overwhelming, it's that I find it boring. I have the mental
| capacity and adequate hard and soft skills to do the work,
| but it's not sustainable to do a good job at something that
| burns one out just thinking about it.
|
| In case it's not crystal clear, I'm not saying it's
| objectively boring work. Some people observably find it
| engaging and I'm glad they do.
| Mezzie wrote:
| And if you do understand both, nobody believes you/they spend
| their time undermining you. The problem is that a lot of
| technical people won't listen to anybody who didn't work in
| their precise subfield for X years, and the non-technical
| people won't listen to someone without (for example) an MBA,
| _even_ when that person is bridging a gap.
|
| Of course I'm not as good at coding as a developer who's done
| this full time for 2 decades _or_ as good at business
| decisions at most C-suite people (or I 'd be running my own
| business), but I've been doing web development for over 20
| years, and I've managed a few projects + have studied how to
| run an organization at the graduate level. Most of the time
| when I notice things and bring them up, all it does is either
| get me more work or it's just ignored anyway.
|
| Part of it is that the tech and non-tech people don't
| understand one another, but another part is that they each
| think their way of thinking is the one best way.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| In my experience there's a lot more need for people who
| understand the data and data systems of a company and how to
| analyze that data than someone who can write some code. This is
| also technical work in my mind. Data analysis done correctly is
| very hard, because it's rarely the case that a company's data
| systems are well-formed, gather the right information without any
| gaps, and organize it effectively. Knowing how to wrangle that
| can make you incredibly valuable to everyone, and there's no need
| to know how to write product code to do it.
| slap_shot wrote:
| > there's a lot more need for people who understand the data
| and data systems of a company and how to analyze that data than
| someone who can write some code
|
| (discloser: I run a company that builds software for data
| professionals, so I have a bias)
|
| This is a very interesting topic I spend a lot of time thinking
| about.
|
| I don't think, in the aggregate, there will be more positions
| available for folks to "analyze data" (i.e. data professionals)
| than positions for those that "write code" (i.e. software
| engineers).
|
| Software has been infused into virtually every industry - that
| is to say most companies are "technology companies" - the
| global labor market for software engineers reflects that.
|
| BUT I do think we are in the nascency of data and data analysis
| (ironic since we closing in on a century of being in the
| "information age") and the number of folk s doing this
| professionally is about to grow astronomically.
|
| If you spend enough time, like I do, talking to companies and
| seeing how they handle data, it's almost staggering how few
| companies get this right, and that the bigger the company, the
| worse the effort. Sometimes I cannot even comprehend how big of
| a wave is coming towards the shoreline.
| vagabund wrote:
| This article is about reaching just a level of proficiency in
| the technical aspects of your company and product that helps
| you excel in your non-technical role. The author specifically
| advises against learning to code because of the time and
| financial barriers to entry. Is there a way to gain an
| employable data science skillset that doesn't necessitate those
| same barriers?
| greatpostman wrote:
| Honestly I've seen the opposite. Business leaders usually
| ignore data insights, and the pay that goes to the average data
| scientist or business intelligence engineer reflects that.
| Building an actual product, aka coding, is where the money is.
| gundmc wrote:
| I think both your and the parent's comments can both be
| accurate at the same time.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Eh, maybe, but usually you'll have to write software to
| wrangle/manage the data. And even if you can go without
| software it would be a lot slower (like a few orders of
| magnitude slower with a human in the loop). But your main point
| about the cost of data wrangling vs the cost of "actual data
| science" is correct.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I thought the title was a great pun, but didn't see Excel
| mentioned in the article. The article even mentioned low-code/no-
| code, which Excel - and offspring like Google Sheets - IMO is the
| original and still best tool in that space.
| sevensor wrote:
| I came to the comments section planning to say the same thing.
| We used to throw around the term "computer literacy." It meant
| being able to use a word processor like WordPerfect and a
| spreadsheet like Lotus 1-2-3, and it meant understanding enough
| about file storage that you knew when it was OK to eject your
| floppy. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.
| Basic competence with word processors and spreadsheets is no
| longer assumed. It's not unusual to meet a young person who,
| despite having been immersed in technology since birth, is
| unaware that Chromebooks support screenshotting and copy-paste
| between apps. (Source: spouse is a teacher whose students not-
| infrequently take pictures of the screen with their phones and
| email themselves the pictures to paste into documents.) There's
| a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had, just gaining what we used
| to regard as basic computer literacy.
|
| (I would not recommend learning how to use floppy disks. That
| information is of almost no use to the layperson.)
| telxosser wrote:
| Seems pretty obvious to me that we are going backwards.
|
| I always worried about this stage of my life as a non-
| software engineer that I would get lapped by the younger
| generation who had been immersed in technology since birth.
|
| Smart phone immersion though not only seems useless but
| counter productive. No computer skills or attention span. At
| least I got a ton of computer skills while my attention span
| was shortened.
|
| Is this going to change with Generation Covid? That seems
| like an easy bet no.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Remember many more people now use computers. That does mean
| that some of them aren't as familiar with them, but a lot
| of that is just that everyone uses them a bit at least
| auxym wrote:
| I hang out on reddit subs for things like mechanical
| engineering, CAD, FEA, electronics and PCB design. It's not
| uncommon for people to be asking for help with their software
| (solidworks, fusion, abaqus, kicad, altium, etc) and posting
| a picture of their screen taking with a phone, apparently
| unaware of the "screenshot" feature of their OS. Often these
| are ME/EE students.
|
| It's somewhat mind boggling.
| brewdad wrote:
| Admittedly, as someone who takes screen shots at least
| weekly, I have taken a photo of my screen simply because
| it's faster and easier than the alternative.
|
| A. On my computer, browse to the site I'm already using on
| my phone. Find the thread I was reading and the comment I
| wish to respond to, if applicable. Post the screnshot.
|
| Or B, take a screenshot, upload it somewhere that I can
| access on my phone. Download it to my phone. Then share it
| on my phone through whatever means my OS makes available.
| drdec wrote:
| That seems perfectly reasonable to me depending on the
| specifics. If you already have reddit on your phone but not
| on the computer, then it is much more convenient just to
| take a pic and post it.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I'm a software developer and I'm one of these people. It's
| because I don't use the screenshot tool often enough to
| know the shortcut key or how to open it. I can't remember.
| It's faster to use the phone as the UI to access the camera
| is 10x more intuitive.
|
| If I care enough to post something nicer I'll google how to
| do it.
| lovich wrote:
| CMD+shift+5 on Mac to open up the screenshot tool
|
| Snip app on windows which you can pull up by hitting the
| windows key and typing the name
|
| Both allow for easy cropping of a screen, and snip has a
| built in marker for drawing on the screenshot
| doopy1 wrote:
| To piggyback off of this, I kind of have a similar issue with
| coding bootcamps. They pump out novice programmers that are
| lacking basic tech literacy. Sure, these folks learned how to
| write a CRUD app, but you hire them and they can't setup SSH
| without massive handholding, etc.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Excel occupies that magical space where the users aren't really
| thinking about coding, they are thinking about solving their
| business problems (and don't even realize they are coding)
| User23 wrote:
| Access and QuickBase also are good examples.
| bdcravens wrote:
| During the pandemic, my employer added an entirely new
| business offering using Excel. It's a beautiful monster, and
| will eventually be ported to our main codebase, but he was
| able to build an income generator when we desperately needed
| it in a fraction of the time any "agile process" could have.
| btown wrote:
| I will add that the next step beyond this is
| relational/referential thinking. The idea that you can have all
| the low-level events or transactions in your system, bring in
| (join/lookup) data from their parent entities without
| duplicating data entry, and then aggregate in different ways...
| whether you use Excel with VLOOKUP or Airtable or SQL, you can
| _design_ user products and analytics projects. Airtable in
| particular is an amazing no-code way to experiment with
| database design and wrangle a data entry project in a way that
| can easily be imported into a relational database in a highly
| normalized way.
|
| If you know these things and are curious about the world, it's
| a quick path to being able to lead a technical project. Add a
| skill like design or domain knowledge and to the right team
| you're suddenly a unicorn even if you've never officially typed
| a line of Python or JS.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| I'm really thankful to my dad (a database analyst) for
| sitting me down one time when I was home on break from
| college to give me a basic overview of how relational
| databases work.
|
| I eventually did more reading on my own, but just knowing
| about this general concept made it so I could see when I had
| a situation where it would be useful. My first job was in an
| architect's office and I had a project that involved tracking
| details of a hundred different doors and windows of a
| historic building, so I used Access to create a database and
| saved so much time keeping track of everything!
|
| In my current position as the combined accounting/HR
| department of a small company, I've been able to build a lot
| of tools using Airtable that help us track deals and
| commissions in a less-manual way, allowing us to scale the
| team a lot faster than we would have been able to otherwise.
|
| Pipedream is another great tool because it has very granular
| coverage of the whole spectrum from no-code to real-code. At
| every step of the learning journey, there's an opportunity to
| get a little more sophisticated, but the whole time I'm also
| able to be productive in solving the business problems in
| front of me.
|
| As someone who aspires to become a developer someday, it's
| really cool to be submitting PRs as part of my not-
| officially-technical day job :)
|
| https://pipedream.com/
| tartoran wrote:
| Likewise I am forever grateful to my dad for the same
| thing. He had me learn relational dbs and SQL 20+ years ago
| and am still benefittinng greatly from that. Unfortunately,
| beside SQL almost everything has seen drastic changes since
| then.
| darksaints wrote:
| The article missed the number one non-technical tech industry
| success vector: the charlatans and bullshitters. These are the
| people who like to call themselves things like "Technologist",
| and they like to make technical decisions about things like
| architecture, but without ever having to get their hands dirty
| dealing with the consequences of their decisions. That's always
| someone else's problem.
| mrkramer wrote:
| WeWork and Theranos comes to mind.
| subpixel wrote:
| "Enterprise Search" - where non-technical, self-styled experts
| turn FUD about how Google's index works into career security.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| Considering the amount of those in the a16z orbit, not a
| surprising omission
| zwieback wrote:
| Quibble: tech != SW. Outside of programming there's a ton of
| technical work where it's helpful but not necessary to know how
| to program.
|
| Beyond that this is a very good read.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, some tech is based on things like physics, math,
| chemistry, manufacturing, and so forth. We've figured out how
| to have people managing a tech business, who couldn't grasp all
| of the disciplines that go into the tech.
|
| The danger with any technology is that it will start extracting
| rent from your business if you don't understand it. At the very
| least, I'd advise any manager to read _The Mythical Man Month_
| , which I think is still fresh after nearly half a century.
| excalibur wrote:
| Coding is a specialty, not the end all be all of tech
| knowledge. You don't want developers configuring your switches
| and firewalls. If I had a dollar for every time I had to help a
| developer setup VPNs and database connections...
| User23 wrote:
| It really depends. There certainly are developer roles where
| actually understanding networking is vital. Of course they
| are a tiny minority, but it's where you find some of the most
| interesting people.
| anyfactor wrote:
| The problem is for me atleast, the people I want to colloborate
| who are technically competent in non-programming fields don't
| see programming as crucial as we see it to be. In many
| situation there is nothing I could offer in terms of efficiency
| or profitability that they can't get done with exisiting
| software solutions, contractors/freelancers etc. In most case
| what programming has to offer for successful small to medium
| businesses is just novelty, I often think and having someone
| constantly trying to integrate programming solutions has little
| marginal value.
|
| When it comes to selling, programming often isn't first thing
| to address for technically successful people who aren't already
| fascinated with startup, hacking, sideproject etc. If you have
| a counter point I would love to hear that.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| That sounds boring, I want to learn cool stuff like programming
| and circuit design.
| TillE wrote:
| Yeah seriously. Becoming an expert user of software (without
| being able to dig into its guts) sounds miserable.
|
| Anyway, there are plenty of roles where you're not writing code
| day to day, but if you don't understand how to program a
| computer (eg, writing simple assembly for an 8-bit CPU) and how
| machine code is executed, you're missing a fundamental piece of
| _how computers work_ from which everything else derives.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| So, it's possible. But why? Basic programming is trivial.
| xalava wrote:
| TLDR: Learn some basic coding while developing related skills
| ozim wrote:
| I disagree, it is more that - "one does not have to do any
| coding but still can be technical" would be more accurate.
|
| Understanding how web browser works to understand how things
| can be implemented, understanding that there is a server and
| database server. Understanding that if website is not loading
| there might be 100s of things that can cause it and it might be
| just something wrong with your browser. Understanding what
| happens when one types in address in the browser.
|
| Understanding which parts of browser behavior developers can
| change and which ones are nonnegotiable.
|
| For example "navigate away" popup - how is it protected and why
| it is ugly looking, and why you should not implement custom one
| in your application.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Some of the most important jobs in tech don't require coding
| skills, they require problem-solving, planning, due diligence,
| and operations skills. A great tech lead or department manager
| merely asks the right questions and gets people to do the right
| things at the right time. Most of the non-software-dev roles have
| various skillsets and can be huge assets if they can think about
| the big picture and put decisions/work into better context.
|
| And actually now that I think of it, just reading the
| documentation of tech is a huge benefit. You can know more about
| some tech than a software dev purely because the dev may never
| have read all the docs and aren't familiar with all its
| capabilities. Architects for example are voracious readers and
| don't really write code.
| hrnn wrote:
| What I've always wondered, is when getting into one of those
| roles (i.e. Tech Lead) without coding history or expertise,
| wouldn't you be missing credibility?
| spikej wrote:
| Not as long as they have a good understanding of what's
| involved, and can ask questions leading you to deliver better
| value to business.
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