[tpm] Perl as a career

[Antonio Sun]

Hi everybody,

I'm new to TPM, and would like to hear your opinion on Perl's future from
the career prospective. It can be considered as to further the "great
debate" about whether IT can be recommended as a profession to the next
generation,
http://techrepublic.com.com/http://techrepublic.com.com/5206-13416-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=234089&start=0

To me, Perl is the most powerful language, however, career-wise, I see most
Perl jobs are maintaining web applications, whereas Perl lost its
competitive edge over Php & Java.

I personally think,

- Though powerful, Perl has always been a "Cinderella", and will continue
  being so, with no "Princess" come along to rescue in the future.
- Perl's role for building web applications will fade out as time goes on.

What do you think?

I'm new here, so my observation might not be correct.
What do you think the percentage would be (web maintaining to all Perl jobs)?
What industry are you in, what type of Perl programming do you do?
What do you think the future (career-wise) of type of work you do?
If you lost your current job, how much likely you can get a similar job?

Thanks

Antonio