A friend of mine from college was laid off back in November. I don’t really talk to the guy outside of the sporadic dinners with our Berkeley EECS class, so I didn’t know until yesterday—his first day in the Marketing department at POWI. All this time, I was only one degree of separation away from someone that had been laid off in this economic collapse. And while it’s a happy day for him, another one of my friends is anxious about another upcoming round of layoffs.