According to , learning to code can add thousands of dollars a year to your salary. This isn’t just because it can help you transition to another career, though it can certainly help with that. Nearly every job these days is being upended by digital disruption. This is true everywhere in the country, but it is especially true in New York City. As the US capital of media and entertainment, New York City is ground zero for some of the most dramatic transformations of the past decade, from legacy companies like the to hot startups like . If you work in New York City, what can you do if you don’t have the skills to ride this wave? The answer is upskilling, and fortunately NYC offers plenty of opportunities for ambitious, motivated people to add new tools to their toolkit.
 

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Now, coding doesn’t just involve learning how to use a program that other people have built; you want to build a program yourself, one that will help you in your job, one that customers or in-house users may interface with. For that, we recommend looking in to . React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces, used by big companies like Netflix and Facebook. In fact, React was developed by a software developer working at Facebook. If your business or job requires any online, customer-facing solutions, React is what you will want to be using. It makes building user interfaces quick, and makes those interfaces easily upgradeable. Furthermore, React is open-source, meaning that the skills you would acquire from learning React could follow you from one workplace to another.
 

The benefits of upskilling

Big Opportunities in the Big Apple: Upskilling in New York City
But the benefits of upskilling go beyond building pretty apps and websites. For example, workers have recently begun utilizing software know-how to automate bits and pieces of their jobs. Say you work in sales, and you need to learn more about some new leads. You could write a piece of software that could cross-reference current leads with known customer profiles to better guess at what that incoming customer wants. This would obviously take a bit of know-how, but it is eminently doable if you have the knowledge, and it gives you the time and information to focus on what matters. In some cases, automation is tied to bumps in productivity of as much as 25 percent. Because increase in productivity is tied to an increase in salary, acquiring the skills to automate parts of your work can be lucrative indeed. Plus, that scenario we mentioned earlier? It’s the story of a company called , a customer relations management software company with an office in, not surprisingly, New York City.
 

Finding support

Big Opportunities in the Big Apple: Upskilling in New York City
Automation, of course, seems sophisticated, but the fact is that, with a supportive community, you can make your way from absolutely zero to automation hero. Selenium is a program used to automate web applications for testing purposes. You might use it if, for example, your workplace wanted to develop a phone app or an new website to interface with customers (because everybody needs an on-screen presence these days). Selenium, however, is somewhat specialized. So how do you find a community to support you? There is a robust in New York City, where you can meet with other people interested in the platform to share ideas. In fact, hundreds of tech meetups are in NYC, catering to every conceivable tech interest.
If you have a desire for some new skills, and a pay bump, the Big Apple is a great place to be. The hot companies that dot the five boroughs are always on the hunt for talent, and you can make yourself ripe for the picking. With the right skillset, your dream job can be yours. You just have to reach out and pick it.
 
Have you considered upskilling to find a new job?
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