Software Skills for Ambitious Tech Workers: Your Complete Guide

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December 15, 2020 Career

If you’re a tech worker in the United States, you’ll know that you’re constantly being asked to reevaluate what you know and what you learned in college as the world of tech changes around you. This means that you have to remain constantly on your toes and be able to pivot to new skills and new domains of knowledge to help your business grow and to help your career go from strength to strength. In this short guide, we’ll look at the software skills you should look to develop in order to maintain your employability and value as a tech worker into the 2020s.

Protecting Your Firm

If you’re the sole tech worker at a small firm, you’re going to be used to juggling responsibilities and spinning plates. That’s par for the course – and you’ll enjoy the way in which you’re required to work on different aspects of your job simultaneously in your ordinary working week.

But, as the world becomes more conscious of just how important cybersecurity is, you should learn to focus on how to use software to help protect your firm from online harm. You may be the only line of defense against intrusions and hacks that your company possesses, so the protection of your digital infrastructure and your sensitive data is in your hands. Rise to this responsibility, and get training in cybersecurity in order to be of the highest value to your firm.

AI Automation

This is truly the future, and the future has truly arrived. Across different sectors, AI and machine learning is already being deployed in an exciting array of fields – including the simple data processing field, as well as in smart customer service chatbots and other more innovative solutions. There’s so much to learn about AI – and this is an area in which you can really show your value to your firm if you get a step ahead of the game.

Taking night classes or getting online training in AI will help boost your value to your firm – or to other firms – in the future. Being able to speak to executives about the different AI implementation options with confidence will make you a truly valued member of the senior planning team – and someone who can save your firm hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

The Cloud

Everyone believes they know just how the cloud works, although few people are aware of how complex things can become when you’re working with cloud infrastructure and you’re trying to ensure that all files are interoperable and omnichannel. This takes a great deal of work behind the scenes form the tech experts – and none more so than the techies who have had to help adjust their firms to remote working in 2020.

As we approach 2021, though, it’s time to look to the next level of cloud computing skills – and how you can help your firm to truly harness the power that’s generated from being able to plug in to software and APIs over the cloud. Take one of the expert cloud training for business classes online in order to get up to speed with this developing technology, bringing your learnings directly into the bosom of the firm at which you work.

Apps and Software Development

In many cases, firms are now interested in building out their own apps and software solutions for their use internally – or externally, with their consumers. Being able to code an app, or create a software solution, is truly a technical feat – and something that you may have to take a year out to fully master. But this is likely where the future of business – into the late 2020s – lies. So, if you want to really surge ahead of the trend, focussing on software development might be your best bet.

Software development also requires the kind of skills that the world’s leading tech companies are most interested in hiring. Think of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and even Apple – all of them are looking for people who can peer into the code of programs and make it better. By learning how to do that yourself, you’ll make yourself a highly employable prospect for the world’s top companies.

Data Analysis

While AI and machine learning are often credited with being able to process Big Data, they aren’t able to do it without a data expert overlooking and overseeing reconciliations and data presentation techniques. Data analysis is actually a long journey of different tasks – including finding the data, cleaning the data, processing the data, and then presenting the data to your superiors. All of this requires a number of different skills.

For instance, you’ll need those purely digital skills that help you understand how to process digital data and different bits of information contained in your value chain. But you’re also going to need statistical analysis skills and a certain mathematical nous in order to make the most of this data and its insights. Only a data analysis course – offered online or at universities – will furnish you fully with the skills you need to offer this service to companies.

People Skills

Finally, though we’ve been listing skills that you should be looking to build in the realm of technology, it’s important that you never lose sight of the important people skills that can help you go far in a tech role within a business. Those techies who are able to act as interpreters between the world of the digital and the world of the physical are regarded as most valuable to most businesses – as they’re able to speak to coders as well as executives.

As such, though you’re looking to get technical with all your work, never neglect that you’re a human being working in an organization of different humans – and that you need to be able to communicate effectively with those around you in order to put your insights and learning’s to good use. You can take online courses in people skills, too – though, often, the best way to build these up is simply to expose yourself to different social situations across your life.

There you have it: key skills you should look to build in order to become an ambitious and successful tech worker.