Code is the language of the modern world. Whether it’s the app that brings emails to a mobile or the car that knows how many miles to go until refuelling. Any smart device needs code instructions to tell it how to operate and communicate with the outside world.
This modern language is so central to business life that the common mantra around technology experts is that today’s children will need to learn to code “or get coded”. It is not just hyperbole. AI-powered robots and programs are on course to be so sophisticated that as many as 400m to 800m jobs are predicted to be lost to the technology by 2030.
With such a dire warning over future job prospects, it is not a great surprise to hear that more workers are deciding to do the coding, rather than get coded. Today, there are 23 million coders in the world and that number will reach almost 28 million within five years time.
Even so, one in two UK-based digital business have been so frustrated by the struggle to recruit skilled programmers that they have launched their own Institute of Coding.
It is co-funded by government and the private sector, and operates in partnership with 25 universities. Its message is that everyday people can learn to programme computers and smart devices. This is not a job for “IT geeks” and it does not lead to endless shifts typing odd-looking numbers and letters and brackets into a keyboard.
Instead the career is promoted as being more about critical thinking and solving problems, which are skills that can open up a multitude of career paths to helping self-driving cars revolutionise global transportation.
The work can be rewarding but, not to sound too mercenary, so can the pay. Programmers earn an average of £52,500 across the UK and more typically an average of £72,500 in London. Contractors, who work without the security of a full-time job, can expect to average around £93,000.
With many future jobs expected to rely on coding skills, it is little surprise to see that education ministries across the world are beginning to push school to start teaching children how to code from a young age.
Within the EU, the UK stands out as one of the 15 countries that has embedded coding in secondary schools and one of nine pushing the skill at primary school. The researchers tracking the curriculum rollout identify two simple statistics as prompting the move. Not only do 90% of jobs require IT skills today, by 2020 there will be a predicted skills shortfall representing 800,000 skilled IT jobs across the EU.
There are many organisations trying to bring this message home to girls at school. According to the latest UK government figures, just 17% of tech employees are female. The Women In IT group believes much of this is due to stereotyping that can make the coding and computer programming industry appear to be the preserve of boys. But if the message that coding is for everyone, not just for boys, can be conveyed successfully, today’s children will be better placed to prosper in the AI-equipped world of the future..