My company hasn't hired anybody locally since late 2000. What few employees we lost were not replaced and we are truly running lean & mean. As a result, the company's balance sheet has never been better. We are about to post our most profitable year in nearly two decades. I have a feeling that companies are not going to be so quick to hire even when things do turn around so that they can continue to squeeze profits out of as few employees as possible. I think the "go-go" years of excess in the high tech world are gone forever. High tech companies are now going to start focusing more on their business and less on their glitzy "dot.com" era images. That should be a good thing in the long term though I realize there is a lot of pain in the short-term for those employees who had the misfortune to get on the wrong side of the downsizing. I hope you find something soon wherever you end up going.
Bottomline ... if your are an American born engineer you have very little chance of getting a job in Silicon Valley right now
Our day of reckoning is coming, the state is overspending on all of the state programs and the pols know it. I suspect Mitt, if elected, will slash and burn. The tech bubble has burst, the stock market has burst, and so will the big gov't bubble.