Our local newspaper publishes a Business Monday section that I read first thing every Monday morning, featuring local Vermont business issues with national and technology business articles thrown in to fill a few more pages. Then it's interesting to see what jobs are available (or rather, not available) in IT. This morning contained an interesting Associated Press article titled "Programming Jobs Losing Luster in U.S." I found it online at LiveScience.com here.
My favorite excerpt:
“The current situation is getting back to the '70s and '80s, where IT workers were the basement cubicle geeks and they weren't very well off,'' said Matthew Moran, author of the six-month-old book “Information Technology Career Builder's Toolkit: A Complete Guide to Building Your Information Technology Career in Any Economy.''
“They were making an honest living but weren't anything more than middle-class people just getting by,'' Moran said.
My take is that if you're a 40-hour-per-week cube dweller already, without the interest or energy to grow your coding skillset and career after-hours, then yeah, probably a basement is in your future. On the other hand, there is just too much cool new technology to learn and too many great applications to build if your head is in the right place. There will always be a market for top level developers who code for the love of it.