As the new year approaches, I'm starting to have a lot of thoughts swirl around in my head about where my career is going. I thought that since a lot of you work in the same field I do, and have dealt with these issues, I might get some good advice.

Here's my background. I am gainfully employed in the IT department of a large mutual fund company as a software engineer. I write security software which performs authentication, authorization, and access control on our public and private web sites. I've been here for almost 4 years since I graduated college, and each year have gotten good reviews. I was promoted within my first year, and since then, have basically been at the same level since then.

Since my company's success is tied to the success of its funds, well, let's just say that times are lean these days. We haven't laid anyone off, but any thought of getting a promotion or raise in this climate is ridiculous. So because of this, and because of poor management decisions and short-sightedness, I feel like my growth and progress has been somewhat stagnant in the last year. They want to cut costs by replacing our internally-developed security software with something off the shelf. So they've been bringing in a lot of people from elsewhere in the company to fill technical lead positions that I was hoping to grow into. Basically, because the focus of my group is shifting away from in-house development and towards COTS integration, I'm hung out to dry. I have considered trying to transfer to another department within IT, but there aren't a lot of jobs which would let me do both C and Java development under UNIX, which is where I want to be.

So I'm starting to consider my options elsewhere. I realize that the job market stinks right now, but I have the feeling good jobs could be out there. In this climate, does it make sense to find a job placement agency to try to find me a job? I have always been skeptical of head hunters, but it seems to me that they could help find a match between what I want and what's out there. I have a pretty easy timetable since I still have a job, and I was thinking I could just let them find stuff for me. Has anyone ever worked with one of these places, and if so, do they actually work?

I guess my other question is... If you were in a similar situation in this economy, would you even bother tempting the fates to look for a better job? Or would you just hang on tightly to what you have until times get better? I absolutely hate where my department is going, and I don't see myself happy if I have to stay here for much longer... But it's a job, it pays the bills, and it's a known quantity. If I go somewhere else, I could end up with a lemon... In this economy, are there really going to be GOOD jobs out there for me to find? Should I just suck it up and go Stepford Wives on the whole thing? There are a lot of variables, I know... I'm just curious if anyone else has had this experience and how you managed to go about the decision making process.