Correct, but you failed to mention this: That kind of work CAN be INSOURCED. There are literally armies of foreigners now living in this country working for so-called "Staffing Agencies". I tallied at my last contract all of the foreigners (from their names in the Active Directory) working at a prominent investment bank via agency. Surprise, surprise....50% of the agencies' hires were from overseas. I went to another bank one day for an interview at their operations headquarters and I got there early to see everyone coming thru the door. With all of the turban headed employees coming in, I had to wonder if I was in New Delhi !! Stay far away from IT unless you've got a really specific lucrative niche or a lot of existing, high paying clients. Otherwise, you'll just be another "mudman" eeking out an existence.
While IT cannot be outsourced, it can be replaced by technologies like IaaS and PaaS. The landscape in programming has changed. But this should be expected. Just like HFT has changed the trading markets, globalization and internet will alter the employment picture. This does not mean that trading is no longer viable. Nor does it mean that good jobs in programming are all gone. However, good operations type jobs are hard to come by. Skill alone is not sufficient any more. Niches open up and close quickly. One must identify the opportunity and execute well on it. I would suppose a forum full of traders would see this parallel immediately. There were no iOS developers just 10 years ago. Social networking was not on the radar. With good coding skills, one can quickly seize the opportunities, either through employment or entrepreneurship. Brett Steenbarger talks about second-order competence in Enchancing Trader Performance. It is relevant in both trading and coding.
Writing software (GNU) != Selling software (Microsoft) != Selling support (RedHat) != Selling solutions (IBM) != Selling gadgets (Apple) != Selling advertisements (Google) != Selling privacy (Facebook) != Selling books (Amazon) != Selling consulting (TCS/Infosys/Wipro) Programming is common for all these firms.
US companies are evading taxes by operating from abroad. But US citizens must pay income tax to US Gov while working abroad. Insider trading is legal to US Congress members. And insider trading is illegal to US Citizens.
But newer great companies hire lots of American programmers. Many companies realize that quality matters more than quantity. Innovation still happens here.
I am teaching myself programming and I am having flashbacks to when I was teaching myself trading... When I first started opening up the page to the Wall St Journal it was like I was lookin at a bunch of hieroglyphs. 3 years down the road I know so much more than I did then, simply because I try to learn something about the markets everyday, because I'm passionate about it and enjoy it. I am frequently reading trading books (skim the garbage), skimming articles or watching some douche bag on youtube, any of this stuff helps and exposes you to new concepts in the industry. It's best to use reputable sources of course, but you get the idea. I am now doing the same thing with programming. I try my best to learn something new every day, read a couple pages out of a book, or look up definitions on the web of structures, objects etc. and ask different sources. I'm still at the stage where I don't know what I'm reading sometimes, but I think in programming there is a lot more content. There are 1000+ programming langaues, each with their own syntax, purpose, etc. I wouldn't say that programming is hard, it's just time consuming. I am reading about c++ and asm mainly, but have looked at java and coded a little in php and html. There is a lot of interconnectedness and similar concepts in most langauges I've found. I would never pay to go to school for computer science. A good friend of mine is getting his masters in CS and he is having problems finding entry level work, just as previous posters are describing. I personally feel like I can learn everything I need to on my own in order to do well in the field (of course it depends on what you want to do) but I want to find a niche and market my services for that niche. For example, there are websites that basically distrubute a single client based application, with 15k+ users paying around $5 a month. You do the math...
You do want to have some computer science exposure though. So you may want to read some books on data structure and theory of programming languages. You will end up coding around data structures a lot. On the other hand, having a good understanding on programming languages/paradigms in general helps you pick the right tools for the job. If you want to explore several dissimilar languages, you may want to play around with Visual Studio, which includes: 1. C#, an excellent object-oriented languages 2. F#, a easy-to-use functional language 3. Visual Basic, arguably the easiest way to create Windows applications All of these languages are tightly integrated with the .NET framework, which also has tools for web and database development. Unfortunately, there is no longer a standard edition for Visual Studio 2010 and the cheapest version still costs a few hundred bucks. Java has great open source support and the language itself will also get you very far. I suggest downloading the free IntelliJ Community Edition. Having a good IDE makes a lot of difference whether you are new or not. I am not sure assembly language is useful anymore. Modern processors are mostly designed for optimizing compilers. If you insist on something lower-level, understanding JVM and CLR will be more valuable.
Final warning about tech: STAY AWAY !!! (or be poor) http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tech-stagnation-has-moribund-pc-business-to-blame-2011-11-19