[nroach]

Programmers are a commodity. Lawyers are a commodity. Managers are a commodity. Dentists are a commodity.

Experts are not.

In any given field, probably 80% of the practitioners can do an adequate job and at least complete the tasks required by their position. In my experience, that number narrows to about 40% if the requirement is that the job is performed on time, on budget, and performed correctly the first time.

The question for the employer is simply whether the task at hand requires a “cog” or an expert. Most businesses require both.

[random_guy]

Agreed. But: I don’t really know exactly what these guys are looking for, still I’m pretty sure (because of the ads) they’re having an hard time finding it. I won’t say programming as a profession is special, because it’s not, but from my experience even finding just a good coding “cog” is a huge win from the employer’s perspective. What I think it happened is that those guys went looking for somebody “ready for industry” into the university, and they hit the wall. I know a lot of very, very smart guys that are studying CS: I’m sure one day they will be awesome hackers but they will need a lot of experience under their belt before they can provide real value to a “real world” project.

[_delirium]

To be fair to CS programs, though, that's true of most areas that have significant practical components. A straight-out-of-college chemical engineer is not going to be able to provide immediate valuable work on a Dow Chemical plant; they need to learn all sorts of things first. One difference might be that Dow expects this more than companies hiring programmers do.