[narby]

I started out in mechanical engineering.......

So how is it that a friend of mine who started his first job out of college in ME about 5 years ago, now has his own CAD firm, a huge boat, and investments in rental property of several million bucks?

Of course, he worked his ass off. And he had the brains to move from Oklahoma (my home state, so I'm not bashing it) to Arizona where the economy is growing.

For all the whiners out there, I was an IBM mainframe programmer too a few years ago. And I never did find another job in that area after 1995. So I got into embedded software, and I now design leading edge hardware and software in agricultural electronics. I'm fat, ugly, old, and white. And I'm making more money than I ever have in my life.

[Garrisson Lee]

Being young, single and free to move, take big risks,etc are big advantages.

My wife's refusal to evacuate the dead economic zone here is killing me. She thinks turning slowly but surely into a thirld world sheep like everyone else around here is a "stable" environment for the family. A year and a half out of any permanent work in my former field has eliminated me from that field by now anyway.

At this point, my only hope is some great new idea.

[Billy_bob_bob]

You've got FReepmail.

[Jorge]

I'm fat, ugly, old, and white. And I'm making more money than I ever have in my life.

Just goes to show that being white easily compensates for any other disadvantage.(sarcasm)
And don't you know that no one is ugly... who makes a lot of money.

[mdmathis6]

I congratulate you for discovering the secret for surviving the machinations of the FAT CATS. You survived and prospered by "building a better mousetrap" and using your life skills in an innovative fashion. No Indian outsourcing firms to send your work to because the can't do what you do! I think if all these whining computer techs, electronics whizzes, and unemployed network managers could get together and form new companies(even if they start from basements and garages), the out sourciing offshore techno slide will be halted as, the miscreant companies would be forced to deal with the upstarts back home in the US, by keeping it's US employees...actually employed.
NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS BE DAMNED! If IBM or other tech firms doesn't want its layed off workers to reveal or use secrets in their future search for employment it needs to keep them employed...period!