all the managers started bringing in other managers

Ha, that sounds almost EXACTLY like my former employer. Our IT department, although very productive, consisted mostly of a core of managers that all knew eachother before hand and through some loopholes, even got the hiring bonus for hiring a friend. But our department was actually functional - there were departments on our org chart in which there were no actual employees. Just 1 manager or VP that would be the "head" of that ficticious department. I won't even go into the top-heavyness of this crap company... They can eat it for all I care. In conjunction with the poor economy, multiple bad management decisions and a lack of direction and vision for the company all contributed to its downfall - and several RIFs.

Unlike most other tech companies in the sector, we had $1.6 BILLION in the bank from 2 IPOs. You think they could figure out something to do with that but no - they bought several piddly little companies that proved to be mostly bad apples. They blew most of that wad and are now scrambling to survive.

Well... enough of that rant. And now for the useful part of this post... As far as finding a job - networking (talking to other people... ) is the way to go. There are some contingency-based recruiters that you pay, but your payment to them is contingent on them finding you a job (hence the name...) - so its not like its a total gamble on your part. I was sent to an outplacement firm that assists people who were laid off as a result of my job loss (Lee Hecht Harrison), and they have all sorts of resources - the other day I looked through a book of recruiters (The Directory of Executive Recruiters 2003) and they have lists of recruiters (both retainer and contingency) and several indexes so you can search by geographic location, industry area, type of position, etc. Its so old fashioned flipping through a book index, but it works. I'm sure there's probably some resource on the Internet somewhere that accomplishes the same purpose.

If I think of anything else as I'm out there looking... I'll let you know. But the market sucks now, so be happy that you have a job - I wouldn't even dare thinking of ditching a job unless I had another one lined up.