I agree with JustLurking. My company is not in SD (closest offices are in Woodland Hills, Thousand Oaks, or Camarillo) but I work from home with a team of mostly all remote employees from all over the country. Over the past year we have hired 6 contractors on our team. All but 1 of those contractors are people someone on the team knew and had worked with in the past. And of all of the full time employees already working on the team, ALL of us knew someone professionally. It’s a large corporation so 3 people have to be considered and interviewed for every spot but it’s all about who you know when it comes to getting hired.

Outside of my company, I have not heard any good news for IT jobs out there. I know someone who took a programming job in Irvine recently for almost 1/2 of what he was making and was happy to just get a job at this point.