I’ve been laid off (I got a new job, though). Friends have been laid off. Other Bay Area Dopers have been laid off. Rasa left! Aiigh!
But…
I’ve noticed, of late, that the traffic situation durring commute hours has improved significantly. Travel times have dropped my a third; sometimes, a half. Maybe it’s a combination of the layoffs and the seasonal reduction in traffic. But it’s less of a hell on the asphalt, these days.
Were you expecting the layoff? My company’s regional staff has gone from 13,000 to 4500 so far this year, with another 1000 to go next week. I’ve dodged the bullet so far… but the wait is killing me. Nothing reduces morale more than people wondering who will get the axe next. The up side is the standard severance package this month is 16 weeks, which is a good chunk of time to look for another job.
My company is getting ready to hire about 4000 more people.
bdgr do you work for Microsoft?
Best of luck at your new job. 
sniffle Punoq, you remembered me… aww!
It’s funny, around the time I left the Bay Area I noticed the same thing about traffic. My 10 mile commute from San Jose to Mountain View was actually becoming reasonable. On bad days it took me almost 2 hrs to get to work, but the last month or so I was there traffic was surprisingly light.
Good luck with the job hunt. I got one month’s severance, and had an interview today that went well and have one next week… so there’s hope yet.
I miss the Bay Area though.
Nope…CSC,we do all the IT for a lot of big companys. I work at Lockheed, and we are gearing up for the JSF project, assuming, of course that we beat out Boeing,whose version looks like a big mmouth bass with wings. Looks pretty good for us, at present.
Oh, and check out the the videos of the hover test on Lockheeds site