This is my anomymous profile that I am using to ask frank questions about the software industry and the software engineering labor market, without risk to my future employment prospects. I have been a software engineer since about 1989. Before that I was a digital eletronics engineer. I have two BS degrees, math and cs, from a flagship state university, which I began after the dot-com bust in 2002. I graduated first in a class of over 150, with a 4.0 gpa. I am currently unemployed and discouraged. Some days I am hopeful, others I am just bitter. Mainly I am trying to understand how the perceptions software engineering job availability and the realities of the same can be so starkly different.