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

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.'"

Comments

Look at what they're hiring.

[Animats]

This guy is head of PubMatic, which is one of those companies on the fringes of on-line advertising. Here are their job listings. The programming jobs are in Puma, India. The US jobs are for things like "Mobile Account Executive" (i.e. ad sales rep.) Requires "proven track record of meeting or exceeding sales targets." No mention of any tech skills.

The PubMatic site is so full of business buzzwords that it's difficult to tell what they actually do. "From brand awareness initiatives looking to reach broad demographic segments through to lower funnel campaigns focused on reaching those expressing purchase intent, PubMatic has a targeting solution to fit advertisers' needs." What they seem to do is match up low-end advertisers with unsold ad space on web sites.

If this company dropped off the face of the earth (or AdBlock became popular enough to delete all their ads) nothing of value would be lost.