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Well I dont own any property atm, but thinking about buying house next year. I am only few years out of university.

I do contract work by customizing software for the needs of specific companies. The stuff I work with is software used in handling manufacturing and engeneering processes by companies such as Pratt and Whitney, Ford etc. I am a small time contractor so far but I can see the room for development. Main system was created in US and now used around the world. But I also try and watch any new developmets in computer industry, have to keep the edge sharp or be out of contracts very fast.

We(me and people who I know who work on simillar projects) have to compete with few Indian companies that do simillar job. Truth is over last couple years we raised out standards of what we deliver to the customers(we work now faster and we deliver ON TIME). On two projects we made a killing after US company who betted on lower cost Indians had to call us in to fix the horrible failure that those guys created.

Basic math works like that. You can hire dozen indian coders(some work from India some are on site in US) or you can hire 1 top level American or Canadian contractor plus 2-3 junior North american contractors(I fall in this category). Depending on the project one or the other maybe more efficient. North Americans tend to get more original/harder projects while Indians cover the volume. Also North American contractors are commonly called in to fix up the mess created by Indians. Then there are east europeans, they do great job but most want to imigrate to US or Canada anyway :) If not they provide somewhat of a middle ground. In softare industry it is often better to pay one guy who REALLY knows what he is doing $180 usd/hour and be sure the project get done, then get 10 guys for $10 usd/hour each and hope for a good luck. Difference in productivity between different people is huge.

136 - You made some good points, and you have an advantage being a Canadian (your dollar is worth less right now - but the US dollar is going down so fast I haven't checked the values lately).

However, a few points -

1. Microsoft is now sending its programming to India - so the Indians there will learn, fast, to make good code. And there are nearly a billion of them to compete against, so even the culling the top .0001% will give them far more programmers.

2. Almost no one knows how to program today. The skills are gone, pretty much. Now people learn how to run computer programs which do the programing. And those programs (programmed by the few real programmers left) are getting smarter and smarter and easier and easier to use. Which means dumber people with lower standards can take your job. As the error trapping/checking gets better, the great need for great programmers is disappearing. And the people who wrote the code initially are getting dead, so many of these compiled programs, no one on earth any longer knows how to debug. They just work. Particularly some of the small utilites, which make the basics of so many programs.

3. A friend of mine designs off shore oil rigs for a living, and business is way down, even in this high priced market, as more and more of his work is offshored. In fact, he told me, as of the first of the year, his company's (one of the top in its field in the world) remaining clients are now asking for bids if they do the job, or if they just 'supervise' the job while getting the Indians to do most of the actual work. So, they must now submit two bids. And this means generally about 50 americans on a job to about 5.

While this isn't computer programming, it is an indication of the competition all these free-traitors are entering you into.

4. You are entering a never ending race to stay ahead of more and more competition, most of it which has nothing to lose, where you have to study endlessly just to keep up with the changes, learning new languages, and finally competing against computer programs rather than people. And as you get a bit older, with wife, kids, house, mortgage, and other expenses, your race to remain with your head above water will get harder and harder.

So, think about it. And think about how you will pay for that house if you lose your job. These free-traitors seem to think that people should know better than to take on any debt they cant pay for with no money, is being a real spendthrift. But without a job to pay your mortgage, you can lose your house in a few months.

I found out from my own work, building petro-chem plants and manufacturing plants, more and more automated each year, that what the real story is, is that with what we build now, we can pay a guy 10cents an hour to push a button to process chemicals on the other side of the world or we can pay an american 20 dollars an hour to press the same button, and they both turn out equal quality product, except, generally, the one on the otherside of the world can make a better product, because that's where we built the newer better plant.

Just some points to think about, and good luck.