While this post is simplistic (we all know there are a lot of technical posers) and the conclusion (found in the title) is wrong, there are a few good points ma

While this post is simplistic (we all know there are a lot of technical posers) and the conclusion (found in the title) is wrong, there are a few good points made along the way. Technical does not have to equal coder, although you can flip it around (all coders are technical) so it's a simple case of affirming the consequent. Happens to a lot of people. There are other technical skills that are quite valuable other than "coding" as noted here. I consider a passionate network admin, DBA, or sysadmin just as (or more) valuable as a "coder" This paragraph is good though: "You can't build stuff. You can't take an idea in your head and produce a product that works. You haven't had things break on you. You haven't spend hours looking for a mistyped space. You don't get in the zone. You've never been on pager duty. You haven't spend 10 years learning your craft. You're reliant on other people to make things for you." It even applies to people who "know how to code" (which by definition are "coders." It all comes down to passion. I have no CS degree, certs, and haven't finished many programming books. However, I've been one of the best techs at my last few gigs. Why? Because I'm interested and passionate about this stuff. I go home at night with a problem, figure it out in the shower, SSH in, and test it out. It's fun to me to fix the problem, I don't want to wait till tomorrow. I spent time in school breaking our school's intranet and housing electronic lock system (successfully) which I showed to our IT folk and they fixed it. Took a lot of time, but it was fun. I sit at home (and work) reading source code, RFCs, man pages etc, while others Google for the first response. They may be a little faster, but they'll have to Google next time they hit that issue. I gained understanding, and I won't forget that.