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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.'"
He's probably the type that thinks for example that for example C# is totally different than any other object oriented language. Most likely he would be honestly surprised to find out somebody that understood general OO concepts and was in an expert in another one like C++ could pick up a second OO in a matter of days or less. (Sorry, I get that a lot. I think it took me 1-2 days to get up to speed from C# from C++. Not sure how long it'd take me to pick up java but I'd expect a week at most.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
His point could have been made better.
I'm not cut out to be a doctor. I'm probably smart enough to do the job, but I don't have the mindset for it, nor really the interest. So, I'd probably make a shitty doctor.
While it is easier to become a professional programmer, becoming someone that can legitimately base a career on it, or write something that a company can rely on is not just a matter of picking up a book. Yes, you could sit down with BASIC and your Commodore 64 and make a little balloon made of sprites fly across your screen, and I could probably sit down with an anatomy book or a first aid book and learn some stuff, even very useful stuff, from that too. However, if I was a hospital accountant, I might decide that I'd do more good for the hospital by actually spending my time being a good accountant, instead of trying to splint bones.
If they want me to learn something completely outside my interests and skillset to do a job that has nothing to do with being able to do my job well, I suppose I would consider such a directive to be idiotic. If anything, sometimes you want people who *don't understand* what you do for a living to do the jobs that are supporting you because they will not gloss over things that you take for granted.
Not with THAT attitude it isn't!
Only those that go beyond their given role and duties deserve a raise, a tip, bonus, reward or even medal.
Just think if Garbage McGee were to come to his boss with a new computer system that optimized the pick-ups by triple, you bet your ass he'd get rewarded for it.
That new pickup would save them buttloads of money, and probably allow them to expand to more areas. Hell if lucky, maybe even recycle some crap with a new recycler system they can afford.
All this lack of imagination. It saddens me.
As a developer, I hope business analysts start churning out loads and loads of scripts. In ten years, my business will be through the roof! Automating one small task is easy. Creating a scalable and maintainable system... not so much.
No, he is telling the NONTECHNICAL people filling NONTECHNICAL jobs in his pseudo-technical company they are useless to him if they can't do something technical that isn't their job. He is saying this to accountants, HR people, administrative assistants. To make this clear to you, imagine the CEO of a medical laboratory company telling college grad he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two medical diagnostic tests. How about if the CEO of an electronics supply company telling college grad he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity designing amplifier circuits? Or, the CEO of a financial company telling college grad he considers them unemployable unless they can claim familiarity with at least two methods of analyzing stock performance. Or, the CEO of a musical instrument company telling college grad he considers them unemployable unless they can play two methods different musical instruments. To put it bluntly, McDonald is an idiot.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.