Having social support and circle of friends is helpful in tough times. But when it comes to jobless engineers, their “social support” consists of other stresses or out of job engineers. These folks usually live away from family and old friends in hubs such as SF and when out of job, hang around with others who function as a depressive echo chamber: Young folks with limited “experience” [failure] and limited history of bouncing back from failures. Keeping in touch with family, working from the real home ( with family support)or living outside tech hubs and making non-tech friends and brushing survival skills for a non-tech world can all help.