Greenspun's class goes back as much the online communities started to become reality. It's among the first, if not the first in academia, for engineering internet applications in a time nobody even considered collaboration and online communities worth.
One thing it doesn't need is advertisment!
Nonetheless, your arguments collide. If the percentage of people who get employed by Goog and Ms is the same as of those MIT students not taking it, then your argument that this is advert of the course is fault. So, you cancel your own argument.
Obviously Greenspun's a webapp veteran. That doesn't mean his class doesn't need advertisement. As I alluded to in the previous post, it's not particularly popular at MIT. And to my knowledge, it's not a class like SICP that's been taken up at universities around the world.
I think at best Greenspun's inclusion of those factoids was meant to imply some causation (that his class helps people get jobs). Maybe he was just name checking for the fun of it. Either way, I suspect most of the alums who took his class and then went on to get jobs at GOOG and MSFT would have been able to without it.
You're right, 6.001 is a required course within the major. I'm not citing its internal popularity, really (although folks love the class). A number of other universities have similar courses offered, whereas I haven't heard of any other 6.171-like classes.
Nonetheless, your arguments collide. If the percentage of people who get employed by Goog and Ms is the same as of those MIT students not taking it, then your argument that this is advert of the course is fault. So, you cancel your own argument.