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I know, I’ve been there - more times than I care to count. I’ve seen companies fail, plants close, jobs move to Mumbai as well as generaly layoffs.

I wish I had the forsight to have gone into something else; or started working as a Civil Servant making half of what I’ve made. I’d be far, far better off today if I had; as is, I’m gonna die like a work horse; with my collar on.

The idea that an engineer can even dream of taking a vacation on $346/wk is a pipe dream; if we suddenly turned off the electricity and gas, refused to eat, parked the car, gave up our medications and never got out of bed; this wouldn’t pay half of my mortgage, let alone pay my family expenses.

Some people haven’t got a CLUE as to what they are babbling about. When you earn $70K/yr, your family budget easily consumes a majority of that - if your income goes away; you will burn through your savings and retirement until you can find a job. The rule of thumb for engineers is that it takes 1 month of looking for work, for each $10K you have earned previously. $70K means 7 months of applying and interviews.

I know, I’ve been there - more times than I care to count. I’ve seen companies fail, plants close, jobs move to Mumbai as well as generally layoffs. ...

The idea that an engineer can even dream of taking a vacation on $346/wk is a pipe dream; ...

Some people haven’t got a CLUE as to what they are babbling about. When you earn $70K/yr, your family budget easily consumes a majority of that - if your income goes away; you will burn through your savings and retirement until you can find a job. ...

Yup .. and right now, as I did after 9-11, one will cash in your saving while they are worth less than when you saved them. Then you will be lucky to come near what you were making; your job was likely off-shored to a third world country or filled by a guest worker paying no or partial taxes. Unlike global corporations and finance - you are not too big to fail - no bailout for you!

While we have record unemployment and underemployment 125,000 new legal workers are brought in each month, 1.5 million per year.

Those in technical professions now compete not only with off shoring, guest workers, but also illegal aliens! Grrr ....