I read the email in footnote #5 a few weeks ago when it was sent out to the list and had a good laugh. Jobslist has an awesome smattering of startup ideas but also lots of what seems to be delusional business students who have "the next big idea" and "just need hackers/coders".

The course vi jobs list is, in my experience, the closest thing i've seen to "the pulse of the startup world" - because most startups with any money want MIT programmers. I have always wanted to see an analysis like this.

Surprising that "ninja" isn't as frequent as we all think (or maybe it's that those times it is used it's just particularly notable/gross).

I'd rather see the words scored by how much more frequent they are here than in English in general. E.g. http://wry.me/blog/2010/04/08/quantitative-tolkien-studies.h... analyzed The Lord of the Rings that way, with a link to the code.

Odd that you never mention that it's Anne Hunter's jobs list; did you think I wouldn't want to have my name out there? I started it at the dawn of the dot.com boom to make students aware of all of those opportunities. My record number of msgs on one day is said to be 27, just before a Career Fair. I almost always "clean up" the subject line to make it more standard, dropping ninja, rock star, wizard, etc., and I definitely send out the ads from MBAs for comic relief. My sense from talking to current students ALL DAY LONG (that's my real job) is that they want to do their OWN startup with their OWN idea, not become somebody else's coder (even if you call it CTO).

Great analysis; be sure and let me know when you do more, and give credit, please.

Anne

Interesting that Android edges out both iPhone and iPad. This would be a nice resource for students looking for skills that will land them jobs (mobile web yes, UNIX rockstar no).