Jobs: Has the Meltdown Hit Us Yet?

The article I commented on is here.

My comment:

My 5 year old son still wants to do what his father does (besides being a cook) so he can write games for his Nintendo DS.
Let's see how long this trend will last.

Over here is Europe I don't see any special measures to help the embedded industry except for bailing out some big bankrupt semiconductor manufacturers maybe. In Asia companies seem to cut resources and focus their efforts on high priority customers.

I see people being fired and companies closing, but I'm not too much surprised. Many of them do things in a suboptimal ways for many years and don't even want to listen to different ways. Darwin's law of evolution by natural selection is going to get them sooner than later and that's global.
As Peter Drucker said: “However low its wages, a business […] is unlikely to survive, let alone prosper, unless it measures up to the standards set by the leaders in the field, anyplace in the world.”

There are no magic tools for this. It's experience, discipline and learning from research/mistakes of others. You just don't have the luxury/time anymore to learn by making all those mistakes yourself.