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Gen Y Tech Savvy, But Not Interested in a Career
jcatcw writes "Young people aren't choosing computer science majors because they take technology for granted — it's something to use not something to make a career. "By and large, this generation is very fluent with technology and with a networked world," according to James Ware, executive producer at The Work Design Collaborative LLC, a Berkeley, Calif., consortium exploring workplace values and the future of the workforce. That future may be in managing technology, which requires skills today's college students don't have: writing, critical thinking, hard work and just plain showing up. One of their primary concerns is a flexible schedule and healthy work/life balance."
While that might be true, not all "15-year-old kids" can get up and get the CompTIA A+ certification that would allow them to work at bigger places and actually make profit for their knowledge...
Hell, not even some older, more experienced techs can establish their skills into something profitable. People always need a technican; I believe it's just a matter of how well the game is played.
Closest I can find to your 26,000 figure is "Computer and Information Scientists, Research" (27,650). The iPhone and Palm jobs you mention wouldn't fall under that, they'd most likely fall under "Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software" (employment of 329,060). Then there's the 472,520 jobs in "Computer Software Engineers, Applications". And the 396,020 "Computer Programmers". There's also 446,460 "Computer Systems Analysts".
Running hedge funds takes an entirely different skillset. There's probably a lot of people with both, I've known a few programmers who went into finance also. But I think the part of the iPhone job most closely related to that is the "getting yelled at by Jobs", not the technical problems.