At first reading I thought your post was rather pessimistic, but sadly I think it is true in today's environment. One thing I have noticed locally: with the economy so bad and so many developers out of work, employers are demanding more and more from their employees knowing that there is virtually no place for them to go if they are unsatisfied. No need to strive to keep the employees happy today! Employers now can expect programmers to spend 18-20 hours of their entire week working and expect no time off for appointments or rest because they feel there is no place for them to go if they leave! It appears that we are moving backwards in time as far as employment stardards are concerned.


>Youth.
>
>Willingness to accept low pay.
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>Anxiety to please.
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>Tell 'em what they want to hear.
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>Work late... often.
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>Readiness to badmouth your colleague to save your own job.
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>... and, after all that, TRAIN YOUR OFFSHORE REPLACEMENT.
>
>What's really hot right now is teaching, nursing, construction, security, military. And those can't easily go offshore.
>
>
>>What's hot? What's not? For today's job market.
>>
>>.NET?
>>Oracle?
>>XML?
>>DHTML?
>>PHP?
>>ASP?
>>VB?
>>Perl?
>>C++?
>>
>>and what else would be good to learn for web programming?
>>
>>Isn't CGI kind of old technology or should I learn it also?
>>
>>I know HTML and JavaScript and Java Applets and VB (beginner) and Access (beginner)
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>I would like to make myself more marketable and a hotter property.
>>Your feedback is much appreciated.