The fact that he didn't know what a browser was and that the sidebar says "director of operations" threw me off into thinking the author was "older" and more advanced in his career before starting to learn programming last year.
It turns out that he finished college (Yale) last year and that this is his first job. (source LinkedIn)
I admit it doesn't change his point about keeping pushing to learn programming and that it can be done from scratch with perseverance. It's just that the late career-change would have added some "spice" to the story to me. :)
Probably because the founders (Yalies just out of college as well) knew him and trusted him, so they tapped him to be part of the team, which is just around 10 people now (based on this: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/10/1009_entrepreneurs_2...).
When I visited the Twitter HQ back in the summer of '08, the joke was that an 8 years old girl was the Director of Operations (she was actually the DoO's young daughter) :)
You may give too much importance to the job title, all in all YouRenew is still a small business -- and yet I salute the fact that he chose to join a startup (with a commendable goal at that) rather than rushing to Wall Street post graduation.
It turns out that he finished college (Yale) last year and that this is his first job. (source LinkedIn)
I admit it doesn't change his point about keeping pushing to learn programming and that it can be done from scratch with perseverance. It's just that the late career-change would have added some "spice" to the story to me. :)