is tricky. A relation was approached at work to explain what his 17 year old daughter had psoted on Facebook -- he had no idea! But it had an impact. Yes, for many the job has disappeared or moved away. I was a highly qualified proof of concept creator (software/hardware) in a University -- no more money! So I get to be overqualified and no proper focus. But, as you infer "It is what it is, and it doesn't matter if you did everything right before. Now is now. I took the advice and immediately formed my own LLC and have been scraping by, and it it is rough out there to be sure. On the side, I'm still here! My feeling is to build interesting things, advertise them *tastefully*, and network, network, network. It's a marathon to be sure -- just don't give up! Question, do you feel social media is required -- or a waste of time? It does sap a lot of time from polishing the core service. #5 sounded like they had the izm (retardizm) when trying to word this. Your asking for to much money so they give an example of someone asking for 30K when they made 70K but they won't hire them anyway? very confusing. While I agree with many of your comments here, I don't agree this one is fully the problem of the job hunter. I agree salaries are getting lower these days. I'm encountering people that will stop talking to