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Bay Area Tech Firms Laying Off 1,200 Workers By Memorial Day (mercurynews.com)
McGruber writes: SAP, Oracle America, PayPal, Instacart, Thin Film Electronics and other technology companies will cut about 1,200 jobs in the Bay Area between now and Memorial Day. According to WARN notices filed with California state labor officials, SAP will eliminate 446 jobs: 179 in Palo Alto, 173 in San Ramon and 94 in South San Francisco; while Oracle intends to cut 352 positions: 255 in Redwood City and 97 in Santa Clara. PayPal plans to reduce staffing levels by 183 jobs: 160 in San Jose and 23 in San Francisco. The South Bay job cuts are slated to occur at the e-commerce titan's offices on North First Street in San Jose. Thin Film Electronics has issued an alert of 54 upcoming job cuts in San Jose. Instacart, an e-commerce unicorn that offers a web-based same-day grocery delivery service, intends to eliminate 162 jobs: 86 positions in San Francisco, 41 in San Mateo, 15 in Oakland, 13 in Berkeley and seven in Campbell. For SAP, Oracle and PayPal, the majority of the employment reductions will be in software jobs.
Usually when we see layoff notices for San Francisco and Silicon Valley, it's followed by the cry: "The unicorns are dying! The unicorns are dying!"
There seems to be growing concern that a recession is coming. But what do we even do with this one little tidbit of information about layoffs without even knowing how it compares to average, represents firms in the area in general, and so on?
they've been posted to /. Also EA just fired a bunch. In all cases they're firing engineers. The sort of people you need to keep the company going.
When you start doing that it's usually because you're prepping for a recession. That's why people care. The Fed is talking about interest rate cuts to slow things down, but that's still up in the air and it's a long way from what's needed (specifically, more banking regulation to put the kibash on the the sort of gambling that got us into the 2008 crash that's been given the go ahead again these last two years; plus some Keynesian subsidies ).
It pisses me off. Since I've been born there's been a recession every 10 years like clockwork. Everytime it happens the middle class takes a permanent pay cut and a hit to their assets and the 1% scoops those pay, benefits and assets up at bargain prices. It's one of the reasons wages are shrinking or stagnant for everybody not at the top.
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More poop in the streets. Yay!
PayPal announced they are closing their Hunt Valley, MD office as well, laying off about 300 people.
In a few months, they'll be lobbying for more H-1Bs claiming they are short on tech workers.
Layoffs are only half of the equation. Looks like there are more people being hired than being laid off.
When you start doing that it's usually because you're prepping for a recession.
No, that's when single companies are laying off 3000+ people at a time.
When you are laying off a handful of engineers? That is when your company sucks and Bay Area salaries are so inflated, they only way you can live another month is to drop salary by shedding a few engineers.
It sure seems like if it's really engineers being laid off they can easily find more work... it's Instacart that is having trouble, not the economy.
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Because we know none of these "great" companies can bear paying market wages for services.
Corporatism != Free Market
Same year?
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