State of the programming industry?

Gundamtdk

I had little success getting a long term, full-time technical support desktop job.

I have been thinking about going into programming.

I already have a programming background from College.
I am currently taking programming night school courses to learn the latest technology.

For those that work in the programming industry are the job opportunities better than the ones in tech support?

JoJoCal19

I can tell you that when I do job searches in IT in Jacksonville and other places in Florida, there are more programming jobs than there are networking/admin type jobs. I think its easier to find programming work than networking positions.

TravR1

Programmnig is very strong right now!

My dad is Sr Java Developer and he says everyone seems to be needing a Java dev right now.

And yes, lots and lots of development ads as well.

MCPWannabe

Like the rest of the IT industry, the higher in skill that you go, the more money.. plain and simple.. What I've found is that the ultra high-paying networking jobs involve a lot of components that are very similar to programming in that the scripting can get pretty advanced. Shoot, with Windows Powershell, you might as be a VBA programmer.

Consequently, there is a high shortage in the USA right now for highly skilled IT professionals (excluding desktop/technical support, entry level programming, mid-level networking).

For one to gain the high level skills usually takes time, but.. if a person is dedicated and they work hard.. they can attain high skills relatively quickly. In the last year, I've passed many very skilled people on the income and skill pole due to tireless effort, several late night lab sessions, and just being aggressive.

Right now, I was just offered a job over 100K to work in a data warehouse. I have two months of experience and 3 consulting references. That's all that it took.

Likewise, I've seen people quickly master Cisco and take off. Success is there if you want it badly enough.

msteinhilber

Well, the first thing I would mention is you ask if programming job opportunities are better than opportunities in tech support. I've not been a programmer by title before, but I would consider an entry level programming position well above a tech support role. The training you would need to devote to in order to transition over to a programming role would far outweigh the training you likely had to put in to get into a tech support role.

Having said that, I always keep an eye out for opportunities in my area and I often times see a lot more opportunities for programming roles than I see for network or system administration type roles. Many of the network/system admin type roles I see around here at least are often times short term jobs or temp to hire possibilities, not a lot of employers around me willing to bring on a regular full-time role whereas more of the programming jobs seem to be offered in a full-time permanent basis here.

The one thing I hear about often through people that I know of in programming is they seemed to have a harder time breaking into the programming field than many others have trying to get into a helpdesk type role and work up into an administration role. This is just second hand information from friends and family that have gone into programming though, your results may vary.