New Skills? Bring It!

• Author: Matthew Jackson
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WeAreSignals isn’t exactly a big company. In fact, compared to some of the web design giants lurking in Johannesburg, we’re pretty damn small. On a fulltime basis, there’s just the two of us – it’s just Greg and I.

We’ve got a third silent member of the team, but she’s more of a secret weapon than a fulltime employee. She’ll sweep in, from time to time, with some rock-steady design advice; she’ll make a couple vital design decisions and she’ll head for the horizon.

She’s a ninja; ninjas are renowned for their dramatic sweeping gestures - when push comes to shove, it comes with a swift karate chop to the neck and a dastardly knee to the balls. Yip; occasionally it hurts.

When you’re working in a small company, you need to be adaptable. You need to be able to do a hell of a lot more than your job description. Now, I’m the writer and when it comes to design I think I can push a couple of pixels; Greg can actually design. We both have a solid background in fine arts and the degree continues to stand us in good stead. Our sites look good and we’re proud of what we do.

Lately, we’ve been doing a little bit of a skill-swop. I’ve been helping Greg with his writing, and interpersonal skills and he’s been trying to teach me some basic coding. Greg’s an English first language speaker, so, teaching him to write hasn’t really been much of a challenge. I simply read what he’s written and give advice where necessary. Teaching him to handle people has been even easier. He’s naturally shy, but he now handles clients like a pro. Nice one!

Teaching me to code, however, is proving to be one detestable bad dream after another. At first, it looked like I’d become a god-like coder in a matter of hours. HTML wasn’t just easy; it danced beneath my nimble code in a matter of hours. In absolutely no time, I manage to develop really ugly, but functional, websites. Following my awesome initial success, I was pretty sure that I would have mastered CSS in a day or two, and JavaScript, PHP and Rails by the end of next week.

Let it be known that my path to enlightenment has encountered more than a few stumbling blocks. CSS is proving challenging and I think it will be months before I begin to tackle any advanced coding. After all, this is an afterhours training programme.

So, what’s the big deal anyway? Why bother to learn the skill sets when we’ve already got people who can do the job well? Apart from wanting to learn more about my industry, there are three really good reasons to up skill all the time.

Here they are:

Knowing the limits

I deal with a lot of the company’s client service. Without knowing the limitations and strengths of our services, I run the very real risk of promising things that can’t be accomplished. Thankfully, our development process is transparent and I’ve yet to promise something which can’t be delivered.

Learning to code is starting to give me a real-world understanding of what it takes to actually develop a site. I suppose it makes me a little cooler to work with from Greg’s side. I think unrealistic demands are now a thing of the past. I can now effectively handle my expectations, as well as the expectations of our clients.

Portable skills and redundancy systems

At no point do I think that I’ll ever become the company’s primary coder. That’s not where my skill set lies. But, being able to develop a site from the ground up is a pretty awesome skill set which you can take almost anywhere in the world.

Being able to code also means that I’ll be able to make informed hiring decisions in the future. The South African web development industry is plagued by a slew of incompetent designers and developers. If you can’t spot em, you might end up hiring one of em. Finally, my learning to code is one of our first steps in setting up redundancy systems to ensure that we continue to deliver awesome client service irrespective of the health of the members of our company.

When you stop learning you die inside

I’m someone who gets bored easily. I think most people are. Sure, I can do the boring tasks associated with my job, but if I don’t keep learning I start to shrivel up and die. This year has proved to be a serious education. I’ve been developing skills which I never thought I’d need. It’s been awesome. Learning to code is just part of the learning curve. In reality, I probably don’t need to know much more than I already do, but it’s a fun exercise and a worthwhile endeavour.

If you’d like to start learning to code yourself, make sure you check out W3C Schools, A List Apart or HTML Dog, they’ll show you how to code properly from the beginning. There’s no point in learning to do things if you’re not going to learn to do them right. Give it a go, you too can swear at your computer for hours on end. Go on, it’s fun.