my friend who got laid off by Agilent found another job in two weeks, even closer to his house, for about 10% less pay.

But, he's doing embedded work and has a different skillset: ME degree, but did RTOS and Perl work at Agilent for high end test equipment. Now, he'll be doing mechanical design and deep embedded (4-bit micros) programming for a small company that makes breathalyzer, digital compasses, home automation, etc.

Based on my contacts and reading, embedded and automation developers haven't been hit anywhere near as bad by the downturn as Internet-related developers.

Tony