Screenshot from Code Year - Week 1 from Codecademy
I get questions periodically from friends who want to know how to do stuff. Since I’m an entrepreneur, I guess they think I know how to get shit done. True enough; my job is to figure stuff out and make it happen. The kinds of questions I get asked are usually business related. How do I set up a corporation. Can I recommend good lawyers and accountants? How do I build a web page or app? Do I know any good programmers? For many entrepreneurs these questions can seem annoying, but I try as hard as I can to be a “Mensch” which means I often respond with some quick tips and a sincere wish of good luck.
Everyone once in a while I’m tempted to give people more advice, not satisfied to addressing the specific question at hand. In general, I have learned some things that I think all people should know these days. This is my short list (in no particular order):
- Learn how to understand and create media of all types.
- Learn how to be a better citizen; i.e. know the legal system work; know your rights and know how to navigate the system to get what you and the world need.
- Learn finance.
- Learn how to be emotionally intelligent; i.e. how to interpret people’s feelings from the things they communicate to you and to be a better communicator of your own feelings.
- Learn yourself; i.e. what you are good at; what you like to do; and what you can get paid for doing.
- Learn how to code.
It’s this last item that I’ve been revisiting since Codeacademy opened up a free year-long course in programming with one lesson a week (screenshot above). I started my career 10 years ago as a software engineer by hacking at HTML and doing graphics in Photoshop. Through years of journeyman work in the field of Product Development, people get more value out of me as a leader, organizer and idea guy, than as a programmer. But I couldn’t have gotten to that level if I didn’t also know the fundamentals of how our product work.
I’m hoping to remind myself about the fundamentals by taking these courses. You won’t catch me writing code for our products; no would I write our own contracts or do our taxes. I trust the people I work with to do that for me. But still, it’s nice to know that if I do have questions, I can rely on some experience, do research on my own first, and thus make my own quest to be a better leader more poignant. If you want to be self-actualized, knowing how to code (any amount) is one really great way today to get there.