The 10 Best Jobs in USA 1631I think the standard definitions are a hopeless muddle. But here is a stab at it. "Software engineer" is a loftier breastle than programmer. I consider it similar to...
There are at least 10-12 subdivisions of IT-SWE-programmer-etc jobs. Some of the job breastles are labels that get stuck on actual work that may be different. Maybe if you are interested, you can look at the newsgroup misc.jobs.wanted, or most of the *.jobs NGs and see for yourself.
You would have to say what the companies do that they work in, say something about their work history, something about their age, something about turnover at those companies, say whether the companies are government-defense, say whether the companies have some fraction or growing fraction of foreigners (eg. h1bs) present, etc.
And yes they are regular employees
I've also previously been on an h1b mailing list mostly of people who had high paying jobs in all kinds of IT, all kinds of stories where suddenly management decides to import h1bs, and the locals train them over some weeks to a few months and at the end, the locals get fired, and then the stories they tell (since most of them are under 40 but have had solid work backgrounds in IT) is that suddenly they are sending out thousands of resumes and never getting answers or never getting interviews. In one case, and only one case, a head hunter called one guy and talked about a programming job, contract only, expected to be six months, and offered $25-hour for everything (meaning no benefits, no retirement, no days off, no job security, no relocation expenses, nothing) and he took it, and then for at least the first week nobody would help him get his hardware set up or the proper software installed and configured, and people there were not even nice to the guy. Of course that's one datum on the graph for one experienced person who did manage to find a temp job after the post dot-com layoff.
Now, I know another case of a programmer who easily got a part time job after retiring. He makes more money now at 2-1-2 days per week part time, before he had a full time job at 5 days per week. What's his secret? Defense work. His prior employer was NSA. Before that, the Air Force. Before that, another defense contractor. Most of they guys I know who got into (any kind of) defense work, early in life, are doing very well, now.
