MPR honestly the best career path you're going to get is in application development. You can either start with a development company or in consulting (Jesus Christ do not ever under any circumstances go into industry.) The most valuable people on these projects are cross-functional with technical understanding and/or skill. What separates good coders from great coders is the ability to understand business requirements and work with clients, and translate technical knowledge into strong solutions that the client understands. If you can do that, you'll be managing projects in no time.

You can do DBA and help desk shit if you want to, but you'll be a commodity to the guys who pay the bills (why do you think Harner is so bitter--he's constantly outsourced to India.) Someone mentioned mobile apps and that really is a hot industry.

There are only two ways to make call-home money as a coder: grow out of the box into a business-facing role (functional, management, etc) or independently develop something valuable (durrr Facebook.) Fortunately they aren't mutually exclusive