I've been living and breathing IT for a little over a decade now (started when I was 16) and to have a chance at a decent IT job today, you've GOT to bring some serious experience and skills to the table or you are pretty much relegated to the "fodder" column. I've worked with mom and pop shops up to the absolute largest IT users in the world (EDS, Wal-Mart, Boeing, etc.) and the story is the same; 10 years ago if you could do basic systems admin work on an OS or two, you had a good chance at a career path that could take you places and allow you to branch out. Today, you better be a cross-platform PRO with strong networking and storage backgrounds AND some application skills before you can be considered a front-runner for a halfway decent (IMHO) job and that's even on the entry side of some companies...
Why? The beginnings of market saturation with these skills. Add to this the ongoing and climing trend of offshore "outsourcing" and anyone that is just starting in this field has one hell of a battle in front of them.
I saw a LOT of friends with good GPA's and some work experience and decent skills for their age just get slaughtered out in the market when things started tightening up; in reality, it hasn't got much better at all with this outsourcing move.
Even though I don't like the concept, I understand why it's being done by companies. The short-term, myopic view of most publicly-traded and some privately-held businesses is to CONSTANTLY find way to cut costs to make up for the loss of margin that products/services see over time due to competition or obsolesence, or just simply to stay in sync with their competitors. What isn't understood is that a certain skill base at home is being totally gutted and will only further reduce the long-term competitiveness of US workers if this trend continues. Certain things you simply can't teach in college and MUST come from entry-level work; without a foundation that can only be built through doing grunt-work on an OS, coding programs, troubleshooting systems, setting up networks, building basic web sites, etc., you simply can't keep a competitive and able workforce. I've digressed from the manufacturing topic and am speaking strictly about the IT industry now.
To get back on topic, there's still something to be said for having a STRONG manufacturing base at home, to the US will figure this out only when China and other foreign countries literally have that global economic cornerstone almost monopolized. Tariffs on foreign goods/services coming into the US isn't much of an answer anymore (we just get them slapped back on us); to be quite honest, I don't know what is, apart from the innovation that seems to always spark here in the US and become the "next big thing" that drives economies into yet another cycle of frenzied output and dispersement to other regions of the globe...
