Job placement experts say such pessimism is a natural byproduct of underemployment. They say ambitious, career-oriented techies tend to dwell on how they're not using skills learned during graduate school or computer certification courses. But they should congratulate themselves on the fact that they're working at all. "It takes a huge psychological toll," said Brian Barton, a Silicon Valley outplacement expert who recently published the 20-page High-Tech Survival Guide for laid-off techies. "Imagine making $100,000 a year and then foaming lattes for a living. A lot of these folks really need a pat on the back. They're trying to make a living and they're taking jobs that aren't glamorous, but they've taken the first step." Less optimistic observers might wonder whether thousands of down-on-their luck techies aren't so much underemployed now but rather overemployed during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Barton admits the economic glory days may have heightened expectations to an unrealistic degree. "There's no question there was a lot of job inflation -- the 20-somethings who were VP of marketing and all those people who shouldn't have been chief executives," Barton said. "I don't know anyone right now who doesn't look back fondly to the economic boom. For those riding the wave, it was an incredible ride. Now we're all sitting here in a sea of foam." Peter Peets has a different take on layoffs. The Chapel Hill, N.C., resident took a job in December 2000 as product manager for software development in a regional office of Cisco Systems. He got laid off four months later in a downsizing that eliminated 8,500 Cisco positions, and he spent the summer fretting about his mortgage and how he'd fund the college education of his three children. He and a former co-worker decided to create a business proposal "on the side" until they found "real jobs." By September, Peets and Chris Ellis had invested $20,000 of their own money to develop an e-learning product that helps train nontechnical people in the vagaries of telecommunications software and hardware. Peets now works about 75 hours per week promoting his new company, EllisTalks.com. "I've always had this entrepreneurial spirit in the back of my mind, and I always wondered what puts people to the point where they live their dreams," Peets, 45, said. "It's harder to take the plunge in a secure job. I was winning awards and getting recognition, and I got chicken. But when I got laid off, it was an unbelievable turning point. "It's not my character to do high-risk things, but the circumstances gave me the courage," Peets said. "There is a silver lining here. I just had to believe in myself, ask my wife and business partner whether they believed in me, and take a leap of faith. Now I'm unbelievably motivated." Fear, not faith, seems to be an even bigger motivator for many out-of-luck techies. Many equate their underemployment to the ticking of a time bomb: The longer they continue fertilising lawns or foaming lattes, the harder it will be to leap back into the world of network applications or product management. Many say that even one or two months without a "real job" is something of a blemish on the resume, raising the eyebrows of suspicious recruiters. Jason Anthony Benavides knows that his computer and networking certifications are becoming staler by the moment, and his dream of networking an entire corporation's computer system is becoming more difficult the longer he remains on the sidelines. The 30-year-old Lakewood, California, resident realised that his network and computer upgrade start-up couldn't generate enough cash to pay his new mortgage in October, so he took a temporary job several hundred miles away cleaning crud from an oil refinery in Richmond, California. The job requires seven-day workweeks and 12-hour days in the refinery's "coker" unit, where residue from distilled coal collects. The cleaning process exposes Benavides to hazardous chemicals, including hydrochloric and sulfuric acid and cancer-causing fumes. "This is a high-hazard job and I can't do it for much longer," said Benavides, who hopes to relaunch his business, Onsite PC Upgrades, next summer or fall. "I love maintaining and building networks. I have to get back into it soon or it will never happen at all."
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