It takes very little coding knowledge to be able to provide massive value.
I learned to program SAS and get a job in about 2 weeks. I had a very strong Math background, but next to no programming background.
6 months later, I'd automated my job, my department's jobs, and another department's jobs.
You can argue that this doesn't count as real coding-SAS is certainly much easier than Ruby. But the point is that it was quite possible to learn enough to provide millions of dollars of business value in a couple of weeks.
Nope-the company was surprisingly good at reassigning people to areas that actually did need work. Except for me-it took them so long to reassign me that I got bored due to a lack of work and left.
I learned to program SAS and get a job in about 2 weeks. I had a very strong Math background, but next to no programming background.
6 months later, I'd automated my job, my department's jobs, and another department's jobs.
You can argue that this doesn't count as real coding-SAS is certainly much easier than Ruby. But the point is that it was quite possible to learn enough to provide millions of dollars of business value in a couple of weeks.