I was talking to a friend of mine on my drive to work this morning, she is a marketing executive at a micro-chip manufacturer. We were talking about the decreasing staffs in marketing departments and how, at least in Silicon Valley, if you don't have a unique branded marketing skill and you are out of work, it was time to change careers. The conversation may sound a bit harsh, but maybe it's true. We also talked about the challenge of having to lay off people or not lay off people....