I'm not talking about the short or even mid term - it will certainly take a long while for the economy to turn around. As far as making money is concerned, I'm with ESR: the big money is in making a software completely ubiquitous, then charging for support. While this doesn't benefit the programmers directly, the companies that provide support do have a vital interest in supporting them. High paying positions? They'll be far farther and fewer between. No surprise, after the surreal amounts of money programmers used to earn - just as it's no surprise that the dot com bubble and its surreal amounts of venture capital had to eventually pop.
The hype is over. Now it's time to return to reality.
Makeshifts last the longest.
