No. Being able to program is not really a requirement for holding down a programming job. I have honestly worked with "programmers" on dev teams who never actually got a line of code into the product -- because thier code was always gibberish that barely compiled, didn't actually do anything, and was easier to just rewrite. Somehow they made management happy so continued to get paid.
However, the point still stands: unfortunately this is an industry where being able to adequately perform the tasks is not a job requirement, therefore holding down a job is not a good measure of skill.
I'm quite surprised by that because that would seem to be pretty counterproductive and is not going to help those companies one bit. Most companies have a profit motive and would not be able to achieve their goals if they went about hiring people like that. I also honestly do not know of a single place where the programmers are not able to actually produce working code, though I definitely have seen various levels of expertise on display.
The most interesting little group of people are three friends that I know, one started out doing electronics, I taught him how to code, he taught one of his friends and they together taught a third guy (who was a pizza courier at the time!) and together they now run a very profitable software company.
And they're all pretty good at what they do, and they would never hire someone that was not able to hold their own.
I've worked at a bank long ago, and definitely the number of people working there that were 'adequate' but not 'great' was larger than elsewhere but there were a couple of guys there that would definitely give you a run for your money.
Typically they'd gravitate to 'systems programming' and the others would be 'application programmers'.
In an symphony orchestra I guess there would have to be a first violinist and 'others', and in carpentry there are cabinet makers and 'general' carpenters. Not everybody will end up being equally good at their job.
Sure, this is true and logical, and actually observable in small/medium companies. In large companies, or companies where software is not the focus however, there is very much room for this sort of counter-productive behavior/effect.
In the middle management tiers, and in the "non-mission critical, support divisions" the company goal and money making are easy to lose sight of. There is a lot of politicking for personal gain, and the employees have a tendency to not care about the company and maximize ways they can personally benefit. This is the land of the programmer who can't code. He exists as a warrior in the landscape of barely competent people with nominal jobs, carving out little empires for themselves and doing things that actively hurt the overall bottom line.
I think maybe jacquesm, you have been a good, motivated programmer surrounded by other good, motivated programmers for long enough that you have forgotten the world isn't entrepreneurial, that most people do the bare minimum at "work, cuz thats why it's called work". This isn't a criticism so much as a reminder of the rest of reality :)
