I started out in IT as a COBOL programmer in 1997 and now I am in IT Security. Not quite the direction I wanted to go but the problem is programming is rated as a low level job now and all of that work is being outsourced to India, China, and Eastern Europe.

I am sure you could get a job as a programmer/developer but it will likely be in .net or java at this point, neither of which I am very good at. I do a lot of Perl coding but that is considered a unix side job.

It all depends on what the employer wants.