Diane Brown

Diane Brown is benefiting from the optimism.Brown says she was "quite nervous" when she learned in March that she would be laid off from her job as a vice president in a Kansas City-based unit of Marconi PLC, a British maker of telecommunications equipment.Brown, 49 years old, worried about her age and the job market.

Before she cleaned out her desk at Marconi, however, a former colleague put her in contact with a recruiter for Qpass Inc., a Seattle company writing software that allows users to download games and messages onto cell phones.Qpass had ridden both sides of the Internet bubble, raising $90 million from private investors in the late 1990s and swelling to 200 employees, before laying off 75 percent of its work force.