thats actually untrue. the key is there are far more jobs than "good" candidates. its a candidate driven market where good developers / programmers, IT staff can command WHATEVER they like in salaries. its the shit people - read juniors, 1st jobbers, visual basic, html, helpdesks, - i did a website for my mum, did some shit project at uni and built my neighbour a pc who are ten a penny and cant command anything in wages. if you are a decent sqlserver or sybase dba, a decent j2ee developer, a decent solaris administrator you can earn around £400 per day contracting or a salary of around 70K. you need to follow the trends of what the market is looking for and keep training in that then get a little commercial experience in it. No ones going to give you a dope job straight out of uni, but do a shit job for 2 years, learn shit then more up, learn more shit in that job then move up. keep doing that, if you really want it you can command very high salaries within 5 years. jeez, i know testers on 350 a day all they got is fuckin testdirector (takes about a week to learn) a iseb test certificate (takes a week to get) and a bit of unix expereince (2 years) and maybe a little RUP and UML (takes about a week to learn.)