Why even HR folks should learn how to code

For the past 2.5 years, I’ve been learning how to code. My motivation grew out of my work at Square, when I started feeling like a hypocrite encouraging students to study engineering and get into tech without myself writing one line of code. Inspired to overcome the barriers in my mind (I faced the same ones the students faced!) and the “non-technical” brand in a technical world, I began learning online. In this journey, I realized two things: I could automate the boring parts of my job (of which there are many in HR), and it’s incredibly empowering to have even basic technical skills.

Automation

Earlier this year, while running our intern program, I became frustrated by keeping up with the ever-changing intern end dates. During an intern’s last week, the Payroll, HR, Recruiting, IT, and Communications teams need a heads-up to make all the necessary preparations and it was my job to send them a notice to do so, on time. After nearly missing two interns, my first approach was creating a calendar event every Monday to review the spreadsheet. This was not a good use of time.

Inspired by a recent Codecademy lesson, I found some templates in Google Sheets for scripts written in a simplified JavaScript. So on a Friday afternoon, I started editing and seeing what was possible. With all of the necessary info stored in a Google Sheet, building something to send an email for me could be my ticket to freedom from this boring task.

One of our interns at the time, Jeff, reviewed the code with me and gave me a “deadline” of Monday morning to have a working solution (with his guidance of course).

My first working notice — a fake apology to Jeff for sending his departure notice prematurely.

After a few iterations and some unblocking help from another engineer, Martin, my script was running! This solution took about an hour to build and saved me an average of 10 minutes/week for 28 weeks, about 5 hours total (not to mention the decreased stress and cognitive load from one less thing to think about). This was literally a case of set-it-and-forget-it.

Jeff’s actual departure notice — working! Hint: I didn’t actually send this email.

While a very simple example, the brilliant engineers at Square wouldn’t think to solve such a small problem that affects one person. But I, with the basic skills, could build it and solve my own problem = winning.

Empowerment Through Code

At first, coding seemed too hard and I never thought to try. However, once I started learning, I was able to think about problems in a different way by breaking them down into smaller parts and asking myself if a computer could do it better. I’ve also been able to loosely follow along with conversations around technical topics, expanding my knowledge of the world I work in.

Today there are hundreds of programs, courses, and platforms to introduce you to coding. My personal favorite has been Codecademy for it’s simplicity, interactive learning, and cost (free). I’ve more recently been working through Harvard’s CS50 course, which is a great introduction to a broader understanding of engineering concepts.

Human Resources has lots of room for innovation, and if more HR professionals could speak (or write) the language and simplify their jobs, the better off everyone would be. Give it a go and see what happens!

Thanks to Dave Fontenot for encouraging me to share this story.