Hot & Useful software skills for novice converts?
alexgartrell: Their prospects are going to kind of suck at first.If I were to do a crash course, I'd say:    Java/C#
    Code Complete/related software engineering books
    Eclipse/Visual Studio
    svn/cvs

You'll notice that there's nothing overly exciting there.  I think it's most important for them to get the standard set of skills that'll give them the best chance of working in software development.  That means the boring stuff that most people here would be "too good for."  Everyone's a code monkey for some portion of their lives, the lucky ones just get it out of the way early.And they might also consider the QA -> Engineering route.  QA sucks (I can attest), but it's a good way to start working with software.  If you're lucky, you can even move into regression tests, regression frameworks, etc.