It's not like before when you could walk around the corner and just get a job. Now, you really have to prove yourself before you can get a position. Stauffacher graduated from high school at 16 and DeVry Institute of Technology when he was 19. Stauffacher wrote code for the Net start-up Epicentric , but decided to switch to systems administration. Right now, they need more administrators than they do programmers.
Engineers are still in demand.
But what's really not in demand are the lower-end programmers. What people are looking for now are more skilled engineers. He left a small, floundering Bay Area company in mid-December, and is now considering making the same move to becoming a sys admin. After a month with no interviews, I gave up looking and took two weeks off to teach myself Java. I'm going to be a lot less picky than before.