I was forced out of programming by early retirement offer from LU. The jobs that were left were sent to Poland, China, and India.

In one case, a friend of mine was laid off at Lucent two years after I was ER'ed. She along with 29 other people in their department. 5 were retained an extra two months to train exactly 30 folks from Poland how to do their old jobs. Programmers in Poland are as cheap as programmers in India. China programmers are even cheaper!

I'm currently way underemployed as an sysadmin and customer service rep ("hello, may I take your problem report"), paid to work only a few days a week, but it's a job (which will likely die off this year).

I don't plan on ever getting back into a real paid programming job. 4 years of BSCS, two years MSCS, and 25 years of experience worth nothing, well, maybe worth "Welcome to WalMart!"