I decided to leave my job of 8 years in July of 2001 (the layoffs in tech had started by then, but really built up momentum a bit after that). At the time I was doing software development for a semiconductor company and it just seemed like after 8 years there I wasn't going anywhere and we'd recently paid off our house so I figured, what the heck, I can find another gig in 6 months, I'll take some time off. When I started looking around in Jan '02 it took several months to find a 3 month contracting gig. After that was over I decided to go back to school and get a masters degree which I did. Had a few conctracting gigs after that but steady work didn't return until '05. So yeah, my timing wasn't great, but I did get my masters degree.