We all know the economy is continuing to take the proverbial plan b all over the tech job industry. The question really isn't "will it effect me?", my guess is yes, the question really is "how is this going to effect me". It may not directly cost you your job, but it will effect you in other ways, stifling innovation, limiting new technologies to hit the market, and generally causing a downturn in "cool stuff" going on.
According to the Techcrunch Layoff Tracker there were 317,000+ laid off tech employees through today. Will the gloom and doom ever end? Layoffs tend to be a trailing indicator of economic downturn, so don't use this as a prediction of future trends, but I doubt we've seen the bottom as of yet. For those of you still with a job, congratulations, and for those of you currently on the employment sidelines, good luck.
My question to my loyal reader is: How will this effect the information security landscape? Will budgets be cut in this area thus highly effecting the service and product providers in the space, or is security such a necessity that we will be immune to the economic slump? Please leave thoughts and ideas in the comments, this is an open forum post today. There is no right answer.
With any luck, it will cause companies to be more thrifty. Maybe they'll let go of some of the "extra baggage", helping those who are left be more effective. Or maybe they will look for more innovative solutions instead of the old status quo of throwing money at m$. Maybe this is the time for open source/formats to emerge as the "better" solution?
