What about the people who dropped out of college hoping to be the next Bill Gates or Richard Branson and failed? These guys are now part of the statistics shown on the graph.
Bill Gates was successful and dropped out of college. He was also hard working and curious. Does that mean that everybody else who's hard working and curious will be as successful without a diploma? I wouldn't bet on it.
Also, having a desire to be in the right place at the right time doesn't guarantee that you'll do just that.
I agree that having a diploma is not what is going to make you successful. But at least, it gives you better odds to beat economic troubles, which is the point of the article.
It's a good thing that in our field there is no single winner and the rest are losers. As a programmer, I want to become as good as I can, be one of the few. I might never become better than Linus Torvalds (simply because he'll keep getting better too), but that won't prevent me from achieving my goal.
Our field is not a competition. There is plenty of room for a bunch of great programmers.
I play poker and I cook. I love the extra money I win at playing a fun card game, and I love to invite people over for dinner parties. Somehow, I wish my hobbies had a bit more synergy! :)
Kent Beck and Robert C. Martin are both programmers. They don't just "write books rather than software" so their input is valuable. On the other hand, this blog post was written by by someone employed by a software consultancy company that prides itself from their Agile practices. So I can hardly blame him for defending his employer's practices.
The article includes a quote "never take software advice from a bug tracking system salesman", and I think the same entertaining aphorism holds true for methodology consultants.
Both have too much invested in you listening to their advice.
Bill Gates was successful and dropped out of college. He was also hard working and curious. Does that mean that everybody else who's hard working and curious will be as successful without a diploma? I wouldn't bet on it.
Also, having a desire to be in the right place at the right time doesn't guarantee that you'll do just that.
I agree that having a diploma is not what is going to make you successful. But at least, it gives you better odds to beat economic troubles, which is the point of the article.