Funny how tech jargon has given way to more mundane words over the past couple of months. From software geeks with fat salaries and their trademark lack of intelligence, to loads of unemployed hangers-on at airport terminals, diplomas in hand, still complacent in their lack of intelligence - things have changed.

No more 'attract-a-VC' party, 'Geeks Rule' T-shirts or free fruit for employees. It's pink slip time.

Which is why, I thought, out of the goodness of my heart: why not look up sites that may lighten things up or make this whole retrenchment epidemic a little easier to handle?

You could start by recommending planetpinkslip to a recently laid-off buddy. It's a site for the 'fired, downsized, rightsized and otherwise unemployed', and offers lots of rude gift ideas for what it terms the 'involuntarily idle'.

Pick e-cards with messages like "Don't think of it as losing your job. Think of it as gaining 8 hours of prime napping time each day", or T-shirts that read, "my severance package is bigger than your severance package…" You could also ask your friend to drown his sorrow at a bar and use pick-up lines like "Let's go back to my place and polish our resumes," or, "Baby, who was the fool who let you go?"

The anti-downsizing site is interesting, too, although it has precious little to do with downsizing. It's been set up by a guy who insists on discussing his life in detail, from an unhappy childhood and the 'onslaught of puberty' to his days at a pizza joint, the corporate years and, finally, downsizing, which he calls "the end of an era or the beginning of being a statistic".

On a more serious note, there are a lot of sites and pages that really do offer some good advice. You can start off with this article's tips on handling a layoff, before moving on to the downsizing blues home page. The latter is an evolving collection of notes that describe the stresses and strains of work in our global economy. It has slide shows on issues, along with lots of photographs, articles, book and video reviews, and links to relevant sites.

The workplace is a cluttered site that loudly proclaims its intention of fighting abuse, harassment, downsizing and work trauma. You can read about raves and rants put up by those who've been let off, if it helps you deal with your own problems. You can also keep track of the latest dotcom layoffs and shutdowns, or try and understand the reasons cited by tech firms for their retrenchment programmes.

Other sites have job hunting tips, and still others tell you about the things to keep in mind when laid off: like getting a record of employment from your human resource office, finding out about job referral assistance, and investigating local job placement resources.

And yes, always remember what that wise guy once said (albeit in another context): 'This too shall pass'.