給大學畢業(yè)生的一封信：我可能不會聘用你.

　　Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won&apost Hire You

　　Dear college graduates:

　　The next month is going to be thrilling as you cross this major milestone in your education. Enjoy the pomp and circumstance, the congratulations, and the parties. But when it&aposs all over and you&aposre ready to go out into the world, you&aposd probably like to meet me, or others like me─I&aposm your next potential dream boss. I run a cool, rapidly growing company in the digital field, where the work is interesting and rewarding. But I&aposve got to be honest about some unfortunate news: I&aposm probably not going to hire you.

　　This isn&apost because I don&apost have positions that need filling. On the contrary, I&aposm constantly searching for talented new employees, and if someone with the right skills walked into my office, he or she would likely leave it with a very compelling offer. The problem is that the right skills are very hard to find. And I&aposm sorry to say it, dear graduates, but you probably don&apost have them.

　　In part, it&aposs not your fault. If you grew up and went to school in the United States, you were educated in a system that has eight times as many high-school football teams as high schools that teach advanced placement computer-science classes. Things are hardly better in the universities. According to one recent report, in the next decade American colleges will mint 40,000 graduates with a bachelor&aposs degree in computer science, though the U.S. economy is slated to create 120,000 computing jobs that require such degrees. You don&apost have to be a math major to do the math: That&aposs three times as many jobs as we have people qualified to fill them.

　　It&aposs time to start addressing this crisis. States should provide additional resources to train and employ teachers of science, technology, engineering and math, as well as increase access to the latest hardware and software for elementary and high-school students. Companies─particularly those like mine that depend heavily on information technology─need to join the fort by sponsoring programs that help schools better train graduates to work in a demanding industry. But there&aposs one more piece of the puzzle that&aposs missing, and it&aposs the one over which you have the most control: you.

　　I realize that you&aposve a lot going on, and that the pressures of finding gainful employment are immense. But understand this, because your future might very well depend on it: If you want to survive in this economy, you&aposd be well-advised to learn how to speak computer code.

　　I don&apost mean that you need to become genius programmers, the kind who hack into NASA&aposs computers for fun. Coding at such a level is a very particular and rare skill, one that most of us─myself included─don&apost possess, just as we don&apost possess the athletic ability to play for the New York Knicks.

　　What we nonexperts do possess is the ability to know enough about how these information systems work that we can be usul discussing them with others. Consider this example: Suppose you&aposre sitting in a meeting with clients, and someone asks you how long a certain digital project is slated to take.

　　Unless you understand the fundamentals of what engineers and programmers do, unless you&aposre familiar enough with the principles and machinations of coding to know how the back end of the business works, any answer you give is a guess and therore probably wrong. Even if your dream job is in marketing or sales or another department seemingly unrelated to programming, I&aposm not going to hire you unless you can at least understand the basic way my company works. And I&aposm not alone.

　　If you want a job in media, technology or a related field, make learning basic computer language your goal this summer. There are plenty of services─some free and others affordable─that will set you on your way.

　　Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture. Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough. Once you can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages, start sending out those resumes.

　　So congratulations again on your achievement─and good luck getting your real-world education.

　　親愛的大學畢業(yè)生們：

　　在下個月，你們就要跨越你們讀書生涯中的一個重大里程碑了，那將是激動人心的時候。盡情享受盛大的畢業(yè)典禮儀式、大家的祝福和歡快的派對吧。當這一切畫上句號，你也準備好走出校園邁入社會時，你大概會想見見我或是其他像我這樣的人，因為我可能就是你下一個理想中的老板。我管理著數(shù)字領域一家發(fā)展迅猛的出色企業(yè)，它的工作有趣又有價值。但是，我得坦誠告訴你們一些不好的消息：我可能不會聘用你們。

　　這并不是因為我沒有需要招人的崗位。相反，我不斷在尋覓有才華的新員工，假如有具備適當技能的人走進我的辦公室，他/她很可能會帶著一個相當誘人的工作邀約離開，問題在于合適的技能很難找到。很抱歉這么說，但是親愛的畢業(yè)生們，你們可能都不具備這些技能。

　　在某種程度上，這并不是你們的錯。如果你是在美國長大和上學的，在你接受教育的這個體系中，擁有橄欖球隊的中學的數(shù)量多達開設大學預修計算機課程的中學的八倍。大學的情況也好不到哪兒去，近期一份報告稱，美國高校在未來十年中將輸送40,000名擁有計算機科學本科學位的畢業(yè)生，可是美國經(jīng)濟預計將創(chuàng)造120,000個需要此類學位的計算機技術崗位。不必學數(shù)學專業(yè)你就能算得清楚：工作崗位的數(shù)量是合格人選的三倍之多。

　　是時候著手解決這個危機了。各州應提供更多資源來培訓和聘任科學、技術、工程和數(shù)學領域的教師，增加可供小學生和中學生使用的最新硬件和軟件。同時，各大企業(yè)，尤其是像我所在公司這種嚴重依賴信息技術的企業(yè)需要參與進來，贊助那些幫助學校更好地訓練畢業(yè)生在一個要求很高的行業(yè)工作的項目。盡管如此，這個難題還缺了另外一個部分，它正是你們擁有最大控制權的那部分──你們自己。

　　我了解你們要做的事情有很多，而且找到收入豐厚工作的壓力非常之大。不過，你們還是要理解這一點(因為你們的未來或許很大程度上就取決于此)──如果你們想在這個經(jīng)濟中生存下去，學會如何運用計算機代碼是明智之舉。

　　我并不是說你需要成為天才程序員，那種入侵美國國家航空航天局(NASA)的電腦來取樂的天才。如此高水平的編程是一種極其獨特和罕見的技能，包括我自己在內(nèi)的大多數(shù)人都不具備，就像我們也不具備在紐約尼克斯隊(Knicks)打球的那種運動天賦一樣。

　　我們這些非專業(yè)人士具備的是，我們有能力去了解足夠多的有關那些信息系統(tǒng)如何運作的知識，如此我們便可在與他人討論這些問題時做個有用的人。想象一下這個情景：假設你正與客戶一起開會，有人問你某個數(shù)字項目預計要花多長時間。

　　除非你了解工程師和程序員所了解的那些基本知識，除非你足夠熟悉編程的原理和技巧所以你知道業(yè)務后端是如何運作的，否則你說出的任何答案都只是猜測，因此很可能都是錯的。即使你理想的工作是營銷、銷售或另一個似乎與編程毫不相關的領域，我也不會聘用你，除非你至少能夠了解我公司運營的基本方式，而且我不是唯一一個這么做的老板。

　　如果你想在媒體、科技或相關領域謀得一份工作，那么就讓學會基本的計算機語言成為你今夏的目標吧。有許多服務項目(有些免費，其他一些價格比較合理)都可助你一臂之力。

　　學會能讓你了解總體情況的足夠多的計算機語言語法和邏輯知識;熟悉應用程序接口;涉獵一些Python語言的知識。對大多數(shù)雇主來說，這些大概已經(jīng)綽綽有余了。一旦你能夠聲稱自己熟悉至少兩種編程語言，那就開始發(fā)送簡歷吧。

　　這里要再次祝賀你取得的成績，也要祝你在獲取現(xiàn)實世界教育的過程中有好運氣。