In our latest episode of Secrets and Stories on enki.com, Bob Ippolito explores a world where tech skills extend beyond developers, reaching into fields like marketing and operations. This isn't about learning to code for the sake of coding. It's about understanding data and using tools to make your job more efficient. Most of us handle data daily, whether in spreadsheets or databases, and leveraging these tools can provide a significant advantage.
Bob shares how, even if you're not a coder, knowledge in data manipulation can set you apart. He uses examples from sales, where automating repetitive tasks like lead generation can free up time for more strategic efforts. It’s about using automation to work smarter, not harder. Bob talks about minimal programming skills that can turn a tedious process into an opportunity for efficiency and insight. It's programming as leverage, not as an end in itself.
This episode invites you to look at technical skills from a wider lens. Nemanja Stojanovici prompts Bob on accessible skills for tech-adjacent roles—skills related to writing queries or prompts, which are achievable with minimal programming knowledge. Bob highlights the potential of tools like sheet formulas, SQL, and even Python. He emphasizes starting small and focusing on practical applications, which can have a multiplier effect on your daily work.
Listening to Bob reveals an important lesson: in today's world, understanding the "how" of technology can be just as important as the technology itself. It's not about becoming a programmer, but about making the tools work for you. Tune in to this episode of Secrets and Stories on enki.com to learn how to unlock more value from the tools you already use and position yourself more effectively in your career.
Nemanja Stojanovic: What about some technical skills that let's say you're not necessarily a developer, but you're, you're marketing, you're in ops or something, you're tech adjacent, you're somewhere in where, where tech skills are still useful, which, which is a bigger, kind of area than just developers. What do you think are some concrete, skills that would be, useful for you to learn that are technical?
Bob Ippolito: I think that the most useful skills to learn are the ones around data. Almost every profession has some situation where you're working with large spreadsheets or, survey responses or something where automation can be particularly useful, if you're in sales, like maybe you're trying to do mail merges to generate leads or, find leads to do cold outreach and automate that in some way, rather than. You know, just typing stuff into LinkedIn search Is going to be really useful to you.
So learning how to use those tools, whether you're explicitly writing code to do it or directing the tools with something that's, roughly equivalent to programming writing queries or even writing prompts that generate queries are the sort of programming tasks that are going to be high leverage for any profession.
Nemanja Stojanovic: Yeah, so from sheets formulas to maybe sequel to even a little bit of Python depending on your use case, right?
Bob Ippolito: Exactly.
