How the Pandemic Pushed People to Code — and What Happens Next…
As the pandemic hit, many people looked to pass the time and improve themselves. Some people took up knitting, some cooking, while I, like many others, turned to coding.
As a bit of background, I had learned a couple of coding languages in undergrad but hadn’t really touched it since. Leading up to the pandemic I was working within financial services, where it wasn’t necessary in my role. However, I was planning to enter business school in order to pivot into Product Management — so being forced to stay home gave me the opportunity to brush up on my coding skills. And I was not alone. Codeacademy for Business saw a 350% growth in B2B sales in 2020.
As more and more people were forced to go digital, and programmers continue to be an extremely desired career path, people turned to businesses like Codeacademy and Coding Dojo in order to gain these new skills. And this increase sees no sign of slowing down. In fact, Codeacademy just raised $40 million in Series D funding, while Replit (a collaborative based browser for coding) raised $20 million.
But does this mean everyone will quit their jobs and become coders? Probably not. But it’s interesting to think how this increase in coding knowledge will affect the job market as we continue from here. How will more people learning to code affect and change non-coding positions? And where will this take us as we (hopefully) come out of the pandemic? Check out Ali Partovi’s (one of the co-founders of Code.org) Ted Talk below where he discusses how coding “is not just for coders”.
It hits on an interesting point that I think can be pushed a little further. With this knowledge now being mixed with different careers — how will this way of thinking push the boundaries within these other fields?
It will be fun to watch the world change with a greater influence from coding. But for now — I’ll just be working on my own personal website.
