Encouraging people to learn to code

We were joined by Joseph Korszun, Manager of Data Science at ProCogia.

One of the topics of the discussion this week was on mentorship and training new users. How do you encourage people to learn to code?

⬢ At every point in your career, you’ve written a formula in Excel so just lending that to translate into you know more usable scripts is helpful.

⬢ It starts with identifying what their determined career path is from their own perspective. Some people want to be more statistics oriented, or more ML engineering oriented. Yu have to understand what their focal point is.

⬢ Help identify someone’s pain point that they have right now and with that – what’s the quickest way to upskill them in that?

⬢ Have people do some hands-on labs. This can be more beneficial than watching videos or reading textbooks and allows you to get into the code. You’re going to have errors along the way but that’s ok!

⬢ Let new coders know that it’s okay to google and copy/paste code. This can unblock new coders, so that you don’t have to code everything from scratch. Adapt existing code to your problem.

⬢ You can pair someone with somebody else who has that skillset to help mentor them.

⬢ Remember that junior colleagues often have a lot to teach to senior team members as well. Things are changing so quickly, and there are so many ways to do things. Interns may teach you something new technically and senior colleagues may then mentor them in the soft-skills.

Resources shared:

⬢ Working with IT: https://lnkd.in/dzU-uzzW

⬢ Security courses here give practical tips for how to follow good security practices as an R programmer: https://lnkd.in/dmb2nmGV

⬢ Manager tools podcast: https://lnkd.in/dXY6hK7V

⬢ Breaking Math podcast: https://lnkd.in/dEJNu64F