I know my wages have been flat for the last 2 years.

I don't worry like i did in the early 2000s that there won't be a job if I leave my current employment (or it disappears) but I have tested the waters a bit and finding a job with equitable salary is not there.

I also see many many jobs requests for Senior or very experienced programmers. I think this might be due to many of the entry level positions being shipped overseas. Those are easier positions to offshore than your Architect/Senior programmer position.

This trend will make it harder for young developers to get the experience they need to become senior developers.

I read a story a while back, I think in the St. Petersburg Times, that a lot of colleges are worried because students are losing interest in IT education because of fear of outsourcing. The nerve of these kids, to actually expect to land a job in the field they're learning in. (I'm kidding, of course). I think they also mentioned the "techie shortage" angle in that story, in the sense that there are plenty of jobs for Americans out there, so roll the dice, take the training, and, if it doesn't work, well, tough. Cashier is on the right.

My favorite is when they use the "we're outsourcing to India (China, Romania, Kenya) because there are not enough technically adept and trained Americans" angle. Give me a break.

My brother-in-law is outsourcing his programming to the Phillipines, since the bill for his new system would be $1mil here in the states and he's getting it for $350K. ($500K was the estimate from Russian programmers.)

He has a currently successful small business, less than 50 employees, and his buffer will be tapped out with even this moderate expenditure. He's also opening a call center office in the Phillipines, to be able to compete in his market, where most of his competitors are already offshore. With only a small downturn or miscalculation, or a small political upheaval and he is out of luck. Only large corporations can afford to outsource and survive all eventualities.

The question is not only whether wages are going up or not, but how many small businesses are forced to go offshore, just to stay alive, or close down, when only the wealthy can afford to compete.

I was actually getting a pretty good salary - but I got laid off twice in the three years that I worked as an engineer. Every other techie I know is shaking in their shoes about losing their job - there's no job security anymore. Even the very highly educated and experienced techies are shaking in their shoes. The last layoff I've been in, they laid off the entire office one by one, over a period of about a year (and no one knew who was next, or when the next layoff was coming), causing two heart attacks and one suicide. After attending the third funeral, I decided that engineering was too stressful an occupation for me.

I have the Cyberstates report in front of me, and I'm happy to contribute to your terrific column/blog/thingmajig. It gives national "high-tech industry" average annual wages thusly:

2000 - $78,691;

2001 - $73,167;

2002 - $71,839;

2003 - $73,196;

2004 - $74,894;

2005 - $75,501.

So average (I assume mean) wages in 2005, the most recent year given, are down from Y2K but up from 2002. (These are all inflation adjusted 2005 dollars, by the way.)

My brother-in-law is outsourcing his programming to the Phillipines, since the bill for his new system would be $1mil here in the states and he's getting it for $350K. ($500K was the estimate from Russian programmers.)

Good luck on him getting what he actually wants from either the Phillipines or Russia. Between time differences and language/cultural barriers, he'll be lucky to get a system that is 50% of what he actually wants within a year of the deadline. And support, modifications or trouleshooting? Good luck! By the time all is said and done, he'll likely have spent far more than if he'd hired some good programmers in the USA.

If you work at an outstanding company like Google, your job for the most part is secure and great. But more and more of my engineering friends are seeing job offers that don't include health benefits. Then there is a minimum of 45-60 hours in a work week. So if you take a $75K job, you are actually making less than that amount. Additionally, they have all worked with outsourced engineers in India or with international "co-op students" from Bangladesh or Latin America, who by the way aren't students but have already graduated from college.

One of my friends can't stand the situation anymore and is leaving for a career in teaching. She reasons that she will at least have a normal 40 hour work week.

One of my friends manages a team of engineers from India. Every project deadline has been missed. The outsourced engineers constantly complain about having meetings at 7 pm (their time) even though the engineers in the USA have to work till 8 or 9 pm almost every other night. My friend is absolutely convinced that the outsourced Indian team is working on other projects from other companies. She hasn't been able to fire them because her boss says he only wants engineers who will work for less than $30K and no health benefits.

I work for one of the big outsourcing firms here in SF... and I'll tell you this. On-shore wages have been flat for the last several years due to pricing pressures from all the off-shoring. But the good news is that the fad stage of outsourcing is starting to fade, and people are realizing it doesn't make sense to outsource everything all the time. Plus, we're starting to tap out the pool of educated workers in India and other countries.

So as work starts to come back on-shore, wages are starting to increase again, which is good news for the US and European tech sectors. And for my wallet!

For those of you who are not working in high technology, "support" refers to jobs such as Marketing Communications, Information Technology, Technical Support, Training and Development, Human Resources, Technical Publications and any other job that does not directly contribute to the bottom line.

I'm a Technical Publications professional, and my profession has been decimated by offshoring, out-sourcing and the handing of jobs over to H1B and L-5 Visa holders. It is virtually impossible to find staff positions any more, most of us have to market ourselves as "one-person tech pubs department"s and even contractors are being squeezed.

I fall into the "one-person tech pubs department" category, and I'm about to be fired from my third job in three years. Before all this I worked for one of the biggest software companies in the world, was part of a Tech Pubs organization of 130+ people world-wide, and was being mentored and trained to take on a challenging but satisfying position in the company's R & D division. I was well-liked by my colleagues and got outstanding notices from my boss. Then, four months after I started, the company to decided to expand its bottom line by offshoring every support job in the company. So out the door I went. Since then I have struggled, offering myself up as the aforementioned one-person operation. Each job has been the same: I sell myself well enough to get in the door, and then am buried alive in a load of work that is simply not possible to do in the time demanded. Eventually I'm told I'm not competent to do the work - a deeply humiliating experience for a pro with my past experience - and am summarily dismissed.

There are many, many others like me. The Society for Technical Communication, my professional organization, now has a SIG (Special Interest Group) dedicated to such workers, and they are almost all in the same boat in which I am sinking. The whole thing is completely insane.

Were it not for off-shoring, I would by now be manager of my own Pubs Group. Instead I'm facing homelessness and will probably have to go into debt so I can go back to school.

So no, there is no "myth" when it comes to support staff.