Warbling Willie Nelson, in a now classic country song, offers up a sage piece of career advice: "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys."

Now, I know that Willie could never be confused with an employment and demographics expert, but I would argue that the craggy state of his countenance should be ample evidence of a hard life lived and, thus, count for something in the experience department. Besides, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that cowboy, as a profession, will offer diminishing opportunities as we shrink the amount of land on which they can ply their trade while the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play–if you know what I mean.

So why, you ask, am I bringing this up? It seems to me that a similarly shrinking playing field is one of the problems we face today in the technology sector. Once a booming job market with higher than average salaries, the U.S. technology sector has fallen on leaner times, as automation has replaced lower-level employees (isn't that ironic?) and higher-level workers–especially programmers–have seen their jobs exported to other countries where the hourly pay rate may be 25 percent of what it is here.