> In terms of straight, steady jobs: Java and .NET, and go to the Midwest.

Huh, that's a good point. Some of my peers from college went to work in Arkansas for Tyson. I also recall other companies from that area (J. B. Hunt and Walmart come to mind) were having recruitment drives some years back.

There are many big organizations one doesn't normally associate with technology that do have large-ish IT departments and tons of programmers on staff, although knowing C/C++ is usually helpful as well.

Other things that are typically overlooked are strong DBA or sysadmin skills. It helps to have provable knowledge of the full stack regardless of where you're going.