Not to discourage you, but I.T., from what I've learned, is a TOUGH field to get started in and to keep going in, especially right now with the "disposable society" a near complete reality.
All the tech/helpdesk jobs that do not deal directly with the hardware are being outsourced to India. In one way it's a "good thing" according to some because those jobs DO suck, I know, I've been in the tech support/helpdesk end where all I did was take calls, and I hated it. It's not much of a "Techical" job compared to say, actually working on machines, or actually solving the big problems, but it was a good starting spot for many in the I.T. field, and this is probably one thing that has made it harder to get into.
Computers are cheap, so repairing them is becoming more and more of a rarity. People like us here are about as obsolete as the machines we're working on. The days of quality are long gone, most of the machines you will find are mass marketed consumer made crap, and not worth fixing as most of the parts are consolidated into one part (eg. the Motherboard). Most of the machines I see in a day at my job that don't work, they're headed for the scrap crusher as soon as a RAM module fails, because it's cheaper to replace the machine than it is to lose one person's days work for a few hours while we replace a DIMM. Anything old or over 2 years old is tagged as surplus and headed for the store or scrap crusher. It's sad, most newer machines don't "live" long enough to see 5 years old, but it's the truth of the I.T. world as it is nowadays. Add that to the companies like Geek Squad who are paid minimum wage to come look at your $200.00 Compaq/HP Tower for 20 minutes to tell you you need a new one, and it's looking pretty bleak for repair. Despite their chintzyness, newer computers CAN be great, if you find the right ones, so it's half and half. You have one group of cheap, crappy, low-end PC's that are neglected because their owners can't afford the price of repair/upgrades, and the upper-middle end PC's, usually used by more experienced users, that have little or no problems because of the experience of the user. Another thing killing is are "nice guys" like me who have friends and family whom we do "free" repairs and tech support for.
Which leads me to saturation. The I.T. Job Market is FLOODED right now with young to mid 20 something folks like me. All of us grew up through the 486-pentium Internet age, listening to all the PSAs on TV, and all our school councilors talking about how "cool" computers are, and how rich you will become if you learn ANY computing trade (haha). Now it's like every 20 something year old guy with a screwdriver is a PC technician. All the guys I work with at work, we all are just as obsessed with computers as I am, allbeit I'm the only one who can appreciate a fine old 286 or 486 box, but that's beside the point. To make it in IT, one must persue being the BEST at their job, and have very very very very interpersonal skills to go with it, because the business/corporate world works more on interpersonal skills, money, and what people think of you, than actual skill. Skill helps bring the older more value-filled people into your favor.
Programming is another "outside this country" thing. Almost ALL of Nintendo's programming happens in Japan. Same goes for a lot of other companies that need precision programming, it's either Japan, China, or India, where the labor is cheaper, and the worth ethic is ridiculous by American standards. The only American programming that happens is in the game world, but you have to have something original, and a REALLY REALLY GOOD marketing team to make it happen. I think the best programming here would happen with people who create something useful that everybody wants, that's my basic thought on it. I can think of a million pieces of software I'd love to make, but I don't have the skills to do it (yet?).
Network Admin and Network Techs will possibly be the only thing to survive the same way as always, the upside is it is something that will NOT go away, unless we find a way to swap out a part in a server remotely (which I dont' think is possible yet, I have yet to hear a switch tech say "Beam me up scottie!" and wind up in the server closet fixing a faulty switch). Network Technicians and Network Techs get pretty good pay, better the more you know, and if you go for things like the Cisco certifications, they can give you mucho cred and get you the high paying network jobs, though they DO involve a lot of globetrotting.
6502 Assembly is near useless these days outside of retro-games, though it could be a good starting point to other assembly languages. Actually, all Assembly is seldom used anymore, it's just not efficient enough for today's programs. C++, Visual BASIC, SQL, Perl, and Java seem to be the most popular ones I've heard about in the programming circles.
