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Ad Exec: Learn To Code Or You're Dead To Me

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-can-you-do-for-me? dept.

theodp writes "In a widely-read WSJ Op-Ed, English major Kirk McDonald, president of online ad optimization service PubMatic, informed college grads that he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages. 'Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture,' McDonald advises. 'Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough.' Over at Typical Programmer, Greg Jorgensen is not impressed. 'I have some complaints about this "everyone must code" movement,' Jorgensen writes, 'and Mr. McDonald's article gives me a starting point because he touched on so many of them.'"

3 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Moronic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are thousands of occupations with no need for programming skills. Ah, how about nursing, for instance. This is just an ad salesman trying to give off the impression of being relevant in this day and age. He's an ad salesman. An idiot.

    I agree!

    I'm a technical recruiter and I can tell you that we need people who can program in askee! Really! Why the other day, I demanded an askee file from a candidate and he sent me a file with a ".txt" extension!

    Really?

    Are people that stupid?

    I asked again, and he sent me a file with an extension of ".asc"!

    Come on!

    We just can't find qualified technology people!

    Finally, this brilliant kid from Deli sent me a ".askee" file.

    Finally!

    We hired him to program SeeKwell in C+#.

  2. Re:O'rly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Um, no. How about the people in advertising or marketing kill themselves?

  3. Re:Basic html and css by game+kid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gah!!! It's all wrong! Here, lemme help you:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html xmlns:fb="http://ogp.me/ns/fb#">
    <head><script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.0/jquery.min.js"></script></head>
    <body>
    <div id="fb-root"></div>
    <script>(function(d, s, id) {
    var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
    if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
    js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
    js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";
    fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
    }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>
    I am an HTML coder.
    There are many like me.
    I can has job?
    <div class="fb-like" data-href="http://example.com/" data-send="true" data-width="450" data-show-faces="true"></div>
    </body>
    </html>

    There, now you're ready for today's web.

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.