4 ms·

You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession In what fields is this true? What is the metric of "better off?" More money? Mor

You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession In what fields is this true? What is the metric of "better off?" More money? More "respect?"

aaronblohowiak 17y ago
The metric in the sentence quoted is "interesting", and that the money is not the issue (as it is comparable to running a fast food joint.)
- starkfist 17y ago
  Still interested in examples.
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    Read the last page of the book, he enumerates many.
  - lindsayrgwatt 17y ago
    I think the point is around how coding can give you superior analytical skills that just blow people away because you can generate better insights. Examples I've seen are people in marketing departments who can write a little python script and suddenly analyze hundreds of thousands of data points. Or someone who combines thousands of geo-targeted data points to better decide where to open chain x's new store. Traditional companies are structured so that there's a "marketing" team and a "business intelligence" team of dba's-cum-statisticians. 90% of the time, if the marketing person doesn't ask the perfect question, they don't get a useful answer - and the BI person is on to their next task. The coder can both ask the question, generate the data and then iterate based on the results of the output. Hugely powerful and can't be done by 90-95% of people in most companies.
hyperbovine 17y ago
Business consulting. They look at you like a wizard.
- patio11 17y ago
  I have gotten the wizard treatment from SEOs I know, too. (Check this out: you can take one list of keywords from source A, and then another list of keywords from source B, and then figure out what are in A but not in B. It is magic!) I saw another website once -- e-commerce in a niche y'all are uninterested in -- where, among numerous other problems, someone was about three lines of PHP away from adding six figures of revenue to the business, because the person who set up the website thought that title tags had to be the same sitewide because they didn't have time to rewrite each of the XY,000 pages individually.
mixmax 17y ago
In finance you would be ahead if you could tweak your models, in accounting you would be better off if you could write tools to automate your daily trivial accounting tasks, in marketing you would be able to impress your clients with a website that automatically shows live updates and spending from their campaigns. The list is endless if you have a little imagination. And better off would either be more free time, more money or more status (however you define that). Pick one.
- VBprogrammer 17y ago
  Working in a multinational finance company in an asset servicing role I can tell you this works up until the point when you are expected to do all of your day to day work in addition to helping out with any trivial task someone would like to automate. Saying that, if I could install anything more pleasant than VBA I'd probably be happy.
  - mixmax 17y ago
    Maybe it's more a question of managing your competencies and making sure you're paid accordingly. If you are expected to do something over and above normal duty it should be reflected in your paycheck.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Depends. Where I work, a lot of quants write prototypes in Excel, but then expect the "real programmers" to turn their prototype into something that consistently produces sane results. I guess, in other words, our "day to day work" is "helping out with any trivial task someone would like to automate", though I personally wouldn't phrase it that way :)
    - VBprogrammer 17y ago
      Just to clarify slightly, I'm a tech guy doing a finance job (while I get round to looking for something else). My day to day work is processing millions of dollars worth of Corporate Actions for pension and investment funds worldwide. If my job description involved implementing solutions to business problems I'd be happy, but just now I do what I can while also having the same workload as other people in the same role.
gte910h 17y ago
Marketing: You can analyze and check your data 100-1000x faster than your co-workers. Hell, you can make entire vendors obsolete. Additionally: Making graphs without opening Excel shaves days of work off your year. Biology: You can catalog and simplify your workflow by breaking things up and correctly keeping them all organized while doing things the fast way. Author: You create smart searches, web spiders, pattern recognition (to capture your repetitive sections) and you learn formatting. Additionally, the text editor skills are very nice for some types of writing. Automotive/Racing: Calculating gear ratios? Analyzing race data? Optimizing pit stops? Not everyone is a formula one racer. Small Businesses: Automated Scheduling of Clerks/floorpeople, inventory managment, loss detection. Fashion: Modeling (no pun intended) cloth usage by shape cuts, number of seams required, etc.
- billybob 17y ago
  This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming. Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? If you don't, why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? OK, if you really love both, do both. Otherwise, you're just wasting time that you should be working on your actual job by piddling around in related programming projects. You're probably being mediocre at both instead of good at one.
  - josh33 17y ago
    > Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? If you don't, why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? OK, if you really love both, do both. It's not weird to like more than one thing. It's also not weird to look at all of the areas you enjoy working in and make a combination of them work. This is what allows us to make a unique contribution.
  - gte910h 17y ago
    >This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming.Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? Because if you know even a little, it goes a long ways in other fields. And honestly, a huge number of programming jobs SUCK. I mean, it's a field specifically excepted from overtime laws! >why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? Because you want to race better? And it's not the driver who I know who does this (it's actually motorcycle racing), but instead some of the pit crew who does. Even hooked up a neato GPS thing for the racer. >Otherwise, you're just wasting time that you should be working on your actual job by piddling around in related programming projects Spoken like someone who's never worked outside of software development. If your job is "select the 10 best properties to turn over", you job could very well include "write software to help do that". If your job is "Make sure this data is sane", you can most likely write some software to help the process along, decrease repetition, and otherwise make you look awesome.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
sangaya 17y ago
Maybe they aren't "better" jobs per-say, but System Administrators, Network Administrators, Security Auditors, Penetration Testers, etc, etc... can all benefit by knowing some basic programming. If you have to do it once, ok, if you might have to do it twice, write a script to do it for you.
- aeontech 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure that anybody who's actually _good_ at these jobs definitely knows more than a little programming. (Even if it is shell programming). The ones who don't are ones who use toolkits built by other people.
ajju 17y ago
It is true in transportation. That's what my startup does. More respect - oh yes. More money - we think so. The early signs are good. More low hanging fruit in terms of satisfaction or directly helping your users improve their life - most definitely! BTW, " if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint." is certainly not true in my case, and I suspect in many cases. I do think "You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession." has a lot of truth to it, although again, it depends on the individual.
kyro 17y ago
Probably healthcare informational services.
albertcardona 17y ago
Biology (and any science field). The ability to process massive amounts of data is key.

You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession In what fields is this true? What is the metric of "better off?" More money? More "respect?"

aaronblohowiak 17y ago

The metric in the sentence quoted is "interesting", and that the money is not the issue (as it is comparable to running a fast food joint.)

starkfist 17y ago
Still interested in examples.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Read the last page of the book, he enumerates many.
- lindsayrgwatt 17y ago
  I think the point is around how coding can give you superior analytical skills that just blow people away because you can generate better insights. Examples I've seen are people in marketing departments who can write a little python script and suddenly analyze hundreds of thousands of data points. Or someone who combines thousands of geo-targeted data points to better decide where to open chain x's new store. Traditional companies are structured so that there's a "marketing" team and a "business intelligence" team of dba's-cum-statisticians. 90% of the time, if the marketing person doesn't ask the perfect question, they don't get a useful answer - and the BI person is on to their next task. The coder can both ask the question, generate the data and then iterate based on the results of the output. Hugely powerful and can't be done by 90-95% of people in most companies.

hyperbovine 17y ago

Business consulting. They look at you like a wizard.

patio11 17y ago
I have gotten the wizard treatment from SEOs I know, too. (Check this out: you can take one list of keywords from source A, and then another list of keywords from source B, and then figure out what are in A but not in B. It is magic!) I saw another website once -- e-commerce in a niche y'all are uninterested in -- where, among numerous other problems, someone was about three lines of PHP away from adding six figures of revenue to the business, because the person who set up the website thought that title tags had to be the same sitewide because they didn't have time to rewrite each of the XY,000 pages individually.

mixmax 17y ago

In finance you would be ahead if you could tweak your models, in accounting you would be better off if you could write tools to automate your daily trivial accounting tasks, in marketing you would be able to impress your clients with a website that automatically shows live updates and spending from their campaigns. The list is endless if you have a little imagination. And better off would either be more free time, more money or more status (however you define that). Pick one.

VBprogrammer 17y ago
Working in a multinational finance company in an asset servicing role I can tell you this works up until the point when you are expected to do all of your day to day work in addition to helping out with any trivial task someone would like to automate. Saying that, if I could install anything more pleasant than VBA I'd probably be happy.
- mixmax 17y ago
  Maybe it's more a question of managing your competencies and making sure you're paid accordingly. If you are expected to do something over and above normal duty it should be reflected in your paycheck.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Depends. Where I work, a lot of quants write prototypes in Excel, but then expect the "real programmers" to turn their prototype into something that consistently produces sane results. I guess, in other words, our "day to day work" is "helping out with any trivial task someone would like to automate", though I personally wouldn't phrase it that way :)
  - VBprogrammer 17y ago
    Just to clarify slightly, I'm a tech guy doing a finance job (while I get round to looking for something else). My day to day work is processing millions of dollars worth of Corporate Actions for pension and investment funds worldwide. If my job description involved implementing solutions to business problems I'd be happy, but just now I do what I can while also having the same workload as other people in the same role.

gte910h 17y ago

Marketing: You can analyze and check your data 100-1000x faster than your co-workers. Hell, you can make entire vendors obsolete. Additionally: Making graphs without opening Excel shaves days of work off your year. Biology: You can catalog and simplify your workflow by breaking things up and correctly keeping them all organized while doing things the fast way. Author: You create smart searches, web spiders, pattern recognition (to capture your repetitive sections) and you learn formatting. Additionally, the text editor skills are very nice for some types of writing. Automotive/Racing: Calculating gear ratios? Analyzing race data? Optimizing pit stops? Not everyone is a formula one racer. Small Businesses: Automated Scheduling of Clerks/floorpeople, inventory managment, loss detection. Fashion: Modeling (no pun intended) cloth usage by shape cuts, number of seams required, etc.

billybob 17y ago
This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming. Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? If you don't, why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? OK, if you really love both, do both. Otherwise, you're just wasting time that you should be working on your actual job by piddling around in related programming projects. You're probably being mediocre at both instead of good at one.
- josh33 17y ago
  > Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? If you don't, why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? OK, if you really love both, do both. It's not weird to like more than one thing. It's also not weird to look at all of the areas you enjoy working in and make a combination of them work. This is what allows us to make a unique contribution.
- gte910h 17y ago
  >This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming.Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? Because if you know even a little, it goes a long ways in other fields. And honestly, a huge number of programming jobs SUCK. I mean, it's a field specifically excepted from overtime laws! >why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? Because you want to race better? And it's not the driver who I know who does this (it's actually motorcycle racing), but instead some of the pit crew who does. Even hooked up a neato GPS thing for the racer. >Otherwise, you're just wasting time that you should be working on your actual job by piddling around in related programming projects Spoken like someone who's never worked outside of software development. If your job is "select the 10 best properties to turn over", you job could very well include "write software to help do that". If your job is "Make sure this data is sane", you can most likely write some software to help the process along, decrease repetition, and otherwise make you look awesome.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

sangaya 17y ago

Maybe they aren't "better" jobs per-say, but System Administrators, Network Administrators, Security Auditors, Penetration Testers, etc, etc... can all benefit by knowing some basic programming. If you have to do it once, ok, if you might have to do it twice, write a script to do it for you.

aeontech 17y ago
I'm pretty sure that anybody who's actually _good_ at these jobs definitely knows more than a little programming. (Even if it is shell programming). The ones who don't are ones who use toolkits built by other people.

ajju 17y ago

It is true in transportation. That's what my startup does. More respect - oh yes. More money - we think so. The early signs are good. More low hanging fruit in terms of satisfaction or directly helping your users improve their life - most definitely! BTW, " if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint." is certainly not true in my case, and I suspect in many cases. I do think "You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession." has a lot of truth to it, although again, it depends on the individual.

kyro 17y ago

Probably healthcare informational services.

albertcardona 17y ago

Biology (and any science field). The ability to process massive amounts of data is key.