Yes, I have three good friends who took IT courses and changed careers in the last couple of years that are now wondering what they possibly could have been thinking.
Engineering in this country has been dead for years and is getting deader with the exception of a few specialties. I was just telling Don Myers privately that I had just cut two cylinder lenses for my second personal laser-driven interferometer tonight. I elected to retire. I'm very good at what I do. I would work in research and development for expenses just for the fun of it. It's a dead field in this country. It's all being done elsewhere.
I'm an instrument machinist in the Swiss mode, a scientific glassblower, knowledgeable about electronic engineering, a real time data acquisition computer programmer, and about a dozen other things. There is now little use for any of it over here. The Washinton Post employment sections are as thin as toilet paper.