This article is written as some kind of drunken rant, desperately holding on to overly formed opinions and 2 validating points of data.
That's not to say that the author doesn't have a point, it's almost certainly true, but Salon should have really had an editor look over this. For crying out loud, he shifts between 14k and 140k employees for Kodak in the article.
How will readers who do not already agree w/ him become convinced?
> How will readers who do not already agree w/ him become convinced?
Because it's getting blatantly obvious for those who are not lucky enough to be part of us, technologist beneficiaries (so over-represented on this site)?
While this will like devolve into a trite discussion about why programming computers is just the same as building a bridge, it's offensive that the software industry takes for granted just how much work goes into earning something like this ring versus coding JavaScript.
I worked my way through college doing web development while studying 80 hours per week on top of that for years to get my engineering degrees. Having systematic devaluation of that is deflating, if not wrong.
This is because the industry, like most groups, values outputs, not inputs.
The skills you have, how you use them and where you learned them are inputs which means that on their own they are largely irrelevant.
It's entirely possible to make a good career, delivering genuine value to organisations and individuals, doing work you can be proud of without having any understanding of CS beyond that you'll pick up during your day to day work and a little reading around the subject. I've worked with great programmers who graduated in science, history, psychology, electronic engineering and so on. These were people who could go toe to toe technically with CS graduates and in some cases they bought things to the table that added significant value which were relatively rare in people with a more conventional computing background. Why does the fact of having not studied computer science formally make them any less valuable?
Bottom line: yes you worked very hard to get your degree and made a significant financial investment in it, but what's important now is what you do with it and that's what you'll be judged on. If you can't translate that knowledge into results why should it be significant?
Sorry, I actually wrote the haiku finding logic in November and it's been running since then while we figured out the look of the tumblr and the moderation workflow.
Working from home makes it so that work time is worth nothing and work results are worth everything. With that, it makes sense that working towards driving results rather than chair-hours is more productive.
