Which is it?
This article in the AP is pessimistic about the job prospects for programmers in the US. If CS grads from Stanford aren't going to work in sofware companies in Silicon Valley because they see their prospects dimming there, what is the hope for most of the programmers out there? The BLS says otherwise and that computer software engineering is going to be one of the fastest growing occupations in the near future. So, which one is it?
What seems to be happening is a reversion to the mean from the bubble years where programmers were being paid over the odds by companies flush with easy money. It takes a while for people to adjust their expectations (last years college grads entered just when the bubble was ending). If Gartner is right and 15% of US tech workers drop out of the field, that is just creative destruction at work - the lower skilled will leave the field and be replaced by offshoring and the a good number of the people left will move up the food chain to do more creative work.
To successfully manage offshored software development, you have to know how software projects work. If you can't manage it successfully, an offshored project won't be of value no matter how low a wage the programmers are being paid. I haven't seen anyway to learn that other than participating in them yourself. So, what we might see is just what the article is describing - you have to have both technical and managerial skills to make a career out of it.