My husband did, right before Christmas (thanks, Mr. Scrooge). He'd been telling them for months that they needed to buy new equipment so it wasn't constantly breaking down. It wasn't his job to fix it, but he constantly had to or they could never have finished anything. He spent hours every day messing around with things that didn't work correctly.

Because of overall reduced productivity, his company let most of the managers go at the same time. Unfortunately in laying him off, they deprived themselves of the one person who knew how to make that equipment work at least half the time. According to friends who still work there, they've lost clients since because they keep missing deadlines, and they've had another round of layoffs because of the reduced revenues.

Last summer, when they had more business than they could keep up with, they should have replaced the faulty equipment. They would have been able to keep up with business then and retained their clients.

I don't blame the economy. I blame their bone-brainedness.

He's a graphic designer. He's now learning web development/programming to broaden his skill set. He's designed for web pages before (and a slew of other things, like packaging, publications, logos) but he's wanting to get into the functionality of it. He was always being asked to freelance web development before, but his job's demands were so time-consuming because of always having to fix the breaking equipment that he was never able to pursue picking up those skills. Now he can.

So he's going to build on his expertise by going into a related field where he can use his extensive experience while picking up new skills.

Well I haven't lost my job, but my husband did. He is a truck driver for the auto industry here in Detroit. Need I say more?

Bad news is there is nothing for him to do now here. He has put in over 100 resumes and had not one call back.

Good news is he just got called to go over the road. Not happy about him being gone 2 weeks home 2 days, but hey we have to do what we have to do right?

I haven't been given a "fair go" when I applied to few jobs here in Australia 3 yrs. ago (even my teaching profession) BUT this encourages me more to think outside the box of not seeking job anymore rather help my husband to work on our home based business, which I do enjoy now though it needs self-discipline but worth it all! Now, we're able to launch our official website and start from there.

I lost my job in November because the startuppy company was running out of money and had to reduce headcount. Right up until the last minute my fate could have gone one of two ways, either I was the invaluable guy who knew so much about the system you could lose anybody *but* me, or else I was a luxury player who worked primarily on next generation projects that were all currently shelved and thus was pulling down a salary that no longer fit my job description. They went with plan B.

But through some quirk of fate, I had a job in 3 weeks. The former CEO got email from a past employee, now hiring, who said "Where can I find PHP programmers?" CEO forwards to me saying "I don't know, but maybe ShakespeareGeek can help you." One meeting over bagels and coffee later and I've got a job!

As an internet software guy, I always look within my expertise. Ours is the kind of skill that can transfer all over the place. I've been in financial services, travel, education, and now PC hardware. Substantially different industries and business models, but the underlying skills of bringing up a solid web architecture are pretty transferable.