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Downturns are not pleasant, but they have a reason to exist. When the boom times of the late nineties caused unprecedented demand for hi-tech talent, many workers flooded into the field that were not suited for it by ability or experience. This downturn is shaking those people out. In the long run, that's good. When the upturn comes, those who are good will have less competition for jobs.

You don't have a clue Joe, millions of jobs have been lost and the H1-B program is a major factor. Combine that with the flight of jobs outside the U.S. and we have a problem never before seen.

However, those accustomed to near-six-figure salaries for routine work are going to have to adjust their sites a bit. I'm not sure they were ever worth that much, and they certainly are not going to get it now.

What kind of work do you do? My guess is that you don't add much to society or production, please prove me wrong.

"You don't have a clue Joe, millions of jobs have been lost and the H1-B program is a major factor. Combine that with the flight of jobs outside the U.S. and we have a problem never before seen."

Then why did our unemployment go down during most of the nineties when the H1-B program was at its height? The H1B program was a response to a severe shortage of tech talent in the 1990s. For several years, anyone in the industry who was any good could write their own ticket. Without those resources helping to bridge the gap in demand, our entire economy would have suffered.

And we will hit that point again in the future, despite the current downturn. In the long run, there has always been and will always be more demand for thinking, problem-solving individuals than the available supply. Using those resources effectively helps the economy as a whole, both here and where those people live. If you don't get the idea behind that, try reading Ricardo's work on comparative advantage, or any other good free-market-oriented economics book such as Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.

What kind of work do you do? My guess is that you don't add much to society or production, please prove me wrong.

I don't see why you feel the need to villify someone just because they hold different opinions (opinions that happen to be very free-market oriented, by the way). But to answer, I have worked in the computer industry for 25 years, doing everything from coding to running tech support to managing a good-sized consulting business. There are many systems that I have written out there doing productive work, some of which have been doing it for many years.