The world has changed a lot in the last two years, people are giving a second look at their life choices, many changed jobs, others ended up jobless. Many companies understood that they do not need to spend loads of money on rent, light, air conditioning, but rather they can have their people work from home if the job allows does not require the physical presence of the employee.
The best part is that workers from all kinds of jobs found out what programmers have known forever, you can be sitting in a Ville in Bali with a Pina Colada in your hand, the ocean in front of you and still be earning money, you just need a laptop.
After all, how many times you have thought I am sure I could just take my laptop and work from home or even all those times you were sick but still needed to finish some projects and you did it all from the comfort of your chair at your house?
Well, programmers have been doing that for a while now, and you can too by learning Java.
Times Change and You Should Keep Up
Every day it gets harder to monetize your skills, especially in a world where most physical interactions are limited and technological advancements are always on the news. Factory jobs, service industry positions, and even many managerial jobs are being replaced by automatization and you do not want to end up on the wrong side of that development. Most new and hot skills are directly or indirectly related to coding and you can find out what those skills are in this article from the folks at Edumatic.
Programming is one of the easiest, if not THE easiest skill to monetize, every company needs an IT department regardless of what they do, moreover, start-ups are everyone, and high-tech products and services are what people want. Think of games, apps, smart appliances, automatic check-outs at stores, etc, this is just a couple of examples of Programs coders write and get very high remunerated for it.
Moreover, you can work from anywhere in the world, you can live in a beautiful east-European city where a fancy dinner for 2 is 10 bucks and still get your 100k+ salary from your company in the United States. Not a lot of jobs give you that kind of freedom and opportunities to grow.
Something you can observe in most jobs is that, with time, the responsibilities and how hard the job itself is, rises. The longer you work the more you get on your plate, that may or may not come with a salary increase but it certainly comes with a lot of extra stress and less free time. When you are a programmer, your salary increases year to year in an almost exponential fashion whereas the amount of stuff you have to do only increases if you want it to increase.
After some time in a company as a coder, you will start getting offers to become a team leader, take some people under your belt, get more involved in other areas of the company, and so on, but you are not forced or expected to take those offers. The funny thing is, your salary still increases because your experience in coding increases year to year, that is how it works. If you want to still work your six hours a day writing programs, no stress, and leaving early on Fridays, you can still do that year after year while getting more and more money for it.
Surely, if you enjoy managing people or having more responsibilities you can start taking those offers for Team leading positions but that is entirely up to you, whereas in other jobs if you want a salary increase, you have to take in more responsibilities.
Programming skills have became extremely desirable and that trend keeps going up, you can check out this article code submission put out with a very in-depth analysis of the growth in earnings for programmers since the 2000s.
Learning a New Skill Has No Downsides
Last year CodeGym dropped an awesome article that is still very relevant so you can start by checking that one first, there you will find very useful advice on how to start your journey in the world of coding.
As we have established, programming is an extremely desirable skill but what we have not talked about is that it is desirable even if you do not want to become a programmer.
Writing code may not be for everyone, after all, sitting in from of a computer for hours looking like Tank from The Matrix may sound boring for some people. Nonetheless, if you are a manager in a big company, a salesperson, a designer or even a photographer learning to code can open a lot of doors for you. Managers who speak the language of their developers are much more efficient in their jobs, projects get done faster and those managers usually make much more than those who have no idea what a programming language is.
Moreover, after learning Java you can start creating or tweaking your website and better managing your online presence, something absolutely crucial for designers, photographers, artists, and so on. Having some basic understanding of how a computer works and how to talk to it not only can open new doors for you but it can save you tons o money since now you know what the dude in tech service is charging you for.
Conclusions and the Main Takeaway From This Article
Why learning programming? That is an easy question to answer because is the main skill any worker needs in the current times. Programming opens you up for opportunities you have not even imagined were possible. Working wherever you want, making tons of money and that amount increases every year, not having to deal with people at the office, being free, and picking your own schedule!
This may sound too good to be true but it really is not, most people are afraid to start programming because it seems too hard, well, it is just like learning a language, at first you may find yourself wondering what is going on but with some practice in a couple of months you will be in a whole other level!
Moreover, coding is literally the easiest skill to monetize and the need for programmers grows constantly, after all, everyone wants to become the new Google, Amazon, or Oracle, while the old ones are still kicking and hiring new people so your options are endless!