[vanniv]

Depends heavily on where you were.

For myself, I was at a startup that was clearly failing (for reasons utterly unrelated to the economy), and jumped ship.

I found a solid dev position in under 30 days in the fall of 2008, right at the peak of the crash, and then moved to a better one at the end of 2010.

Some companies instituted hiring freezes and others had layoffs. Many companies terminated all of their engineering contractors.

Overall, it was a time where you had to be able to demonstrate your usefulness, and you could still lose your job to unluckiness, if your whole division was tossed.

2008-2010 was not a time for "rest and vest" to be a viable strategy. Folks who looked like they were doing that were always the in the first round of layoffs.