[LIConFem]

"The other part is companies don’t want to hire, they want to bring someone in for 6 or 18 months, and if you are married raising a family you aren’t as likely to hop around the country every few months."

There have always been a lot of consulting opportunities out there, but to say there is a shortage of permanent gigs out there just doesn't track with reality. I've been an engineer for 23 years, and have spent 16.5 of those years working here in NYC. The market for perm employment is just about as good as it has ever been. The one caviat is that firms who seek perm employees seem to want the more experienced engineers, as opposed to years ago, when firms would happily take on lightweights and train them.

[GingisK]

...but to say there is a shortage of permanent gigs out there just doesn't track with reality. I've been an engineer for 23 years...

I've been an engineer for over fourty years. My experience is that the jobs have pretty much dried up. Only five years ago "monster.com" would turn up something like 4000 jobs nationwide in my specialty. Now there are only 26. Those never respond to me because they advertise only out of legal necessity: they hire H1Bs.

While there are some things to do in your area, there no longer is much on a National basis. I wouldn't live in NY to save my soul.

I am not a web page builder or database guy. I'm a hard-core computer science and electronics engineer. I can write operating systems, data base engines, I/O subsystems, and so on. I can also design electronic instrumentation and then write the firmware for it. It seem that all of that is gone; and, only network administrators, web page authors, and SQL jobs remain. None of those are really engineering disciplines.

[HamiltonJay]

I know its hard for someone in NYC to accept, but NYC is not indicative of the nation as a whole. Perm jobs have declined exponentially over the last 5 or so years.