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This article is an incoherent mix of sweeping generalisations "When I find no alternative but to speak personally to CS grads, I find them a miserable lot who require all my skills to engage in any conversation about anything" and contradictions about whether computing is or is not a good industry to get into.
For all that, I'll fashion a response because publication of these articles seems to be tied to the regular movement of the Earth around the sun.
Here's the thing - studying Computer Science does not prepare young people for the workplace - it's not designed to. Universities are (mostly) places where kids go to prove their overall aptitude - so there's no wonder they are ill prepared for your specific banking job. In the absence of candidates fitting your precise requirements (e.g. knowledge of algorithms) it has to be your place to train them up, and you have to accept that they have the aptitude to learn based on the 18 years of schooling they've just had and the interview you just gave them. They dont know how to code a binary search in C? So what! They got a 2:1 from a red brick and thats good enough for me, and if they need to know how to code the binary search I can point them at a book!
To summarise my first point - to dismiss graduates that don't know algorithms to the level you want *is absolutely fine* - if you can find the graduates with the requisite skill, it's your duty to go for them. But in a scarce market (which the market will always be, because there's a whole lot more to Comp Sci than the algos you are concerned with), to do so is to dismiss candidates' overall aptitude (IQ / ability to learn / whatever) as irrelevant, which seems absurd. And to do so publicly is just bewildering.
Briefly, my second point.
The annual UK Comp Sci graduate cohort is ballpark 30,000 people (ref. 1). Say you run a bank and you will only consider applicants from "certain universities". That limits you to say (being generous); 10000 graduates. Now, say there are around 30 major banks in the UK (2). That means that there are 333 graduates available per bank, if we assume an even spread. But you're only interested in the top 30% so thats a round 100.
Now banking is only a single vertical market, there are a thousand others in the UK, all using the same pool of graduates, so that figure diminishes somewhat.
But wait... you offer 3 times the salary of other companies? Ah, but you're based in the City, so you really pay exactly the same. And you don't pay for continuous training, you don't have a system of mentorship (yes, I know you probably say you do), you use legacy technologies, you didn't pay attention to the physical environment the developers are working in, you expect heroic efforts as a result of poor management and pay no overtime?
Actually, I think I'll study Economics.
(1) http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php/content/view/1541/161/
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_the_United_Kingdom
Biting the hand that feeds IT
