Aren't you guys kind of ignoring his question? He didn't say that he's unhappy with his life and wants to quit his job, he said he doesn't want to be a programmer anymore and needs help figuring out what to do next. People spend a majority of their waking life at work, they should be doing something they enjoy.
I went through something similar a few years ago. I didn't get a computer science degree but fell into programming on my own because I picked it up easily, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life being a programmer and I saw that I didn't identify with other programmers that loved their jobs. I've always done some design with programming, worked around a lot of designers, and eventually switched to becoming an interaction designer (which allows me to be analytical with my work but spend a limited amount of time in code).
If there's a way for you to try something else at your current job, don't be afraid to talk to your boss and your peers about it. I thought I would get a lot of flack for not wanting to do the job I was hired for, but everyone in my company was extremely supportive. If you're a good employee, you can be as good doing something else and people want to be supportive of that (and keep you, no matter what you do).
The thing that sticks out the most to me in Andy's critique is how he skims over the fact that news sites currently have a lot of ads to keep them afloat, and removing them requires dismantling entire ads sales departments, marketing departments, industry standards for ad sizes that must be available on your site for advertisers to even want to talk to you, and the bottom line: huge chunks of money (especially for big homepage campaigns).
This is something that every designer (and developer) at every media organization has to struggle with. And it speaks to what you said about someone looking in from the outside. It's very easy to create something like Andy's lovely design (and I'm sure every designer at every media organization has created or has wanted to create something similar), but it's another thing to design around all these ad sizes and push back on ad sales to have more room for creativity.
I went through something similar a few years ago. I didn't get a computer science degree but fell into programming on my own because I picked it up easily, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life being a programmer and I saw that I didn't identify with other programmers that loved their jobs. I've always done some design with programming, worked around a lot of designers, and eventually switched to becoming an interaction designer (which allows me to be analytical with my work but spend a limited amount of time in code).
If there's a way for you to try something else at your current job, don't be afraid to talk to your boss and your peers about it. I thought I would get a lot of flack for not wanting to do the job I was hired for, but everyone in my company was extremely supportive. If you're a good employee, you can be as good doing something else and people want to be supportive of that (and keep you, no matter what you do).