It's interesting that Joel purports to treat his programmer staff as professionals, yet has the same unreasonable tradesman-focused expectations that the cube farm managers have about education in Computer Science.

A graduating structural engineer has no idea how to marshal a design through the building inspector's approval process. A graduating lawyer has no idea how to actually engage in litigation. Yet those fields aren't dominated by managers whining that students should be learning "real world skills" instead of "theoretical stuff" like high physics or constitutional law.

They understand that a professional isn't an automation that gets precision machined by a training program to slide frictionlessly into their workflow. They know that when they hire a graduate, he isn't trained in the mechanics of his job (nor is he even licensed yet), and that the hire represents a commitment on the firm's part to take the theoretical knowledge he got in school show him how to leverage it for the real-world practice of his profession. They are fine with that because they have a culture -- as professions and as firms -- of respecting and investing in their practitioners.

The computing industry doesn't operate that way. All the lip service it gives about 'professionalism' is, as far as I can tell, entirely driven by a desire to ensure that programmers remain exempt. Why is it that the manager class at development firms is dominated by non-technical MBAs? Why are development firms not set up so that programmers are partner-tracked associates? I can't think of any real profession where that's not the default configuration for a firm. And most apropos here: why do they expect their supposedly professional workforce to receive trade skills from their university education programs?

I think people like Joel need to quit attacking universities until they can get some consistency in their own views of their employees. Either programmers are the skilled tradesmen we're currently treated as. In which case, the exempt status should be removed and the industry should come up with a tradesman's curriculum. Or they should accept us as professionals, and start treating us that way.

There is a management culture of referring to technical people as "resources", e.g. this person is a "Java resource" and we'll need 3 "Linux resources" on that project.

They sure don't like it when I call 'em "Powerpoint resources".

This kid's real problem is [insert projection here].

It's been said here many times before: if you are an AWS value-add startup, watch out. Their march up the value chain is relentless.

It's a Computer Science degree, not a programming degree. If you want to learn a trade, go to trade school not a four-year university.

You wouldn't expect someone with a degree in English to know how to navigate a book contract, would you?

Direct link to Randall's comment: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoo...

Ahh, sweet sizteen, to have that year all over again...