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Tech Layoffs More Than Double In Bay Area (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on Mercury News: In yet another sign of a slowdown in the booming Bay Area economy, tech layoffs more than doubled in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year (could be paywalled, here's an alternate source). Yahoo's 279 workers let go this year contributed to the 3,135 tech jobs lost in the four-county region of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and San Francisco counties from January through April, as did the 50 workers axed at Toshiba America in Livermore and the 71 at Autodesk in San Francisco. In the first four months of last year, just 1,515 Bay Area tech workers were laid off, according to mandatory filings under California's WARN Act. For that period in 2014, the region's tech layoffs numbered 1,330. The jump comes amid a litany of other signs that the tech economy may be taking a breather: disappointing earning reports from stalwarts like Apple, an IPO market that has come to a near standstill, a volatile stock exchange and uncertainty in China.
Sounds like gloom and doom to me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How dare you inject facts into this discussion!
Oh, by the way, China does not have economic problems at all compared to the USA compared to what is being 'reported'. China'd only problem is subsidising USA consumption and creating its own inflation for that purpose. USD collapsed will fix that.
Yeah, you're right. Billions spent constructing whole cities that sit empty, large drops in the stock market (to the point where trading has to be halted on multiple occasions), houses and apartments sitting empty because they were purchased as investments and have driven up the cost of rent/real estate, and significant drops in demand for raw materials such as steel or other goods such as construction materials aren't major economic problems.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Number H1B requests to go up as well.
I like how everyone here is a Libertarian until their jobs are at stake. Makes me laugh every time.
(What should we name these types of hypocrites? I propose Glib-ertarians.)
FFS, isn't it obvious: Leave Sillicon Valley and run for your life! The obscene cost of living leads to sky-high wages which means that when a small company hits a speed bump, mathematics requires them to dump staff much much faster than it would in a market where, say, a VMware admin (not architect, but admin) makes a salary more reasonable than the $140k that seems to be the floor for that role out there. For much of the United States, that's like 35-40% premium.
Move someplace less "trendy," and more "stable," and you'll find your job disappearing far less often. Besides the dot-com bust, I've never once lost a job I didn't want to lose. And even that dot-com situation wasn't really my fault: Our company restated earnings and laid off thousands at the same time Arthur Andersen went under in Chicago, so I was competing with people 20 years older than me with 20 years more experience, and the only offer I fielded was for like $25k--take it or leave it!--so I left. Moved to less trendy, less exciting Indianapolis, and have been employed ever since. Cost of living is low, and I still make a good six figure salary--which goes a helluva lot further than $140k goes in the Valley.
Who did what now?
Why hypocrites?
A shortage of talent AND layoffs can actually coexist within the same company.
If you need Linux Developers and you've just dropped your unsuccessful Mac or Windows product and laid off the entire devision, how does that suddenly add to the pool of Linux Developers?
The folks being laid off are picked over for talent worth retaining in light of current company needs. The ones whose jobs are eliminated but are not sufficiently skilled to be deployed elsewhere within the company are let go.
My questions are:
* Should companies continue to make products no one wants in order to avoid layoffs?
* Should they retain employees who used to support Windows but cannot support Linux (or vice versa) and call them Talented on the new platform?
Thanks,
- Wiz
Answer: The employer should offer retraining to the affected employees so they can transition from software development for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X, to use your example, to GNU/Linux. Some employees will refuse retraining and prefer to be laid-off - fine. However, I dare say many of the existing software developers will opt for retraining. The fundamental skills remain the same although the operating system specific aspects should be the focus of the transition.
I think the worst offender might be GitHub. They didn't even make Git, they just have a fancy frontend and host some servers. What do they possibly need 568 employees for?