How about just learning to "Think like a coder". The mayor of NYC's time probably isn't best spent hacking away on some Ruby code at 3AM. But, thinking like a coder ( e.g. What parts of my job can be automated, what checks do I need to have to make sure one of my decisions doesn't have unintended consequences, or better yet.. assume that unattended consequences are going to happen and try to build policy to contain any bad stuff ).