
Tech layoffs more than double in Bay Area - akg_67
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_29880696/tech-layoffs-more-than-double-bay-area
======
ChuckMcM
That layoffs have increased should not surprise anyone at this point. Unlike
the dot com explosion it seems painfully difficult as a regular employee to
have divested some of your equity gains mid-bubble. That makes it more
painful.

However, every time there is a great deflating, it is because the market is
tired and preparing to embrace something different. So far I've been through
several of these, chips in the 80's dot coms in the late 90s, storage in the
early 2000's, and now either web 2.0 or social (depending on how you score
it). Three threads are competing for the next round, IoT, Machine Learning,
and Bioinformatics. CRISPR derived technologies could be in there too but I
see a lot of regulatory hurdles headed that way which will be hard to dodge.

The thing to keep in mind though if you are one of the folks getting laid off,
it isn't you its them. Seriously. Layoffs happen when the world shifts and
your company didn't shift with it. That said, it still sucks to suddenly be
out of a job and the temptation will be to grab at the first thing that offers
you something. My advice to you is to be thoughtful. Think through what you
want to do, what the world is going through, and how you want to look back at
your role on that. Then head for the area that best meets those needs.

~~~
nostrademons
The interesting thing to me is is that each of these inflection points, the
industry had a set of 2-3 possible "next big things", and then _none_ of them
happened and the actual next big thing was something different.

In the early 90s, the next big thing was WebTV, VR, or PDAs. Instead, we got
the WWW.

Post dot-com crash, the next big thing was P2P, enterprise software, and the
semantic web. Instead, we got social networking.

In 2008, the next big thing was casual games, (micro)blogs, and embeddable
widgets. Instead we got mobile and the sharing economy.

Now, the next big thing is wearables, IoT, or AI. And who knows what we're
going to get?

Looking at the patterns, it looks like the mistake most people make is to
extrapolate the _last_ big thing into the next, not being willing to make a
big enough conceptual jump. So enterprise software, the semantic web, and P2P
are all offshoots of the WWW and all enjoyed some modest success, but a
_different_ offshoot of the WWW (social) connected it to a different area of
peoples' lives. Casual games, microblogs, and embeddable widgets are all
offshoots of social, but a _different_ offshoot of these social changes was
enabled by mobile, which enabled totally different ways of interacting.

~~~
uola
I have a hard time seeing how that is accurate. People misjudge the timing and
widespread it will be, but those next big things you mentioned are billion
dollar industries now.

WebTV -> YouTube, Netflix. VR -> Warcraft, EVE Online, Minecraft. PDAs -> iOS,
Android. P2P -> Spotify, Skype, BitTorrent. Enterprise Software -> A lot, but
obviously not well known, say Atlassian. Semantiv Web and APIs have largely
failed, probably because of the shift to mobile. Casual games -> Rovio,
Supercell, King. Microblog -> Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Twitter. Embeddable
widgets -> All the big companies. Failed dot com things -> "sharing economy"
and of course earlier things like Amazon.

And most of those things are still successors to other technologies that
performed the same function.

Most of the things happend, just as we know wearables, IoT and AI is going to
happen. It's when and how that is the question. The people who hype things are
always going to dominate over the people who argue the facts, at least in
public forums. Look at any discussion on HN about space, self-driving cars,
digital currency etc.

~~~
nostrademons
As is often repeated around the tech industry, "Early = wrong". Knowing that
mobile became a huge hit in 2010 doesn't really help the folks writing apps
for NewtonScript in 1992 or Palm in 2000. WebTV was a specific Microsoft
product (that was gonna be huge, it was the next information superhighway!) -
it was actually a set-top box more like GoogleTV or AppleTV - and Microsoft
benefitted not a bit from YouTube or Netflix's success. If you got the "casual
games" part right but missed the "mobile" part, you ended up like Slide,
Newgrounds, or Kongregate, all of which are in decline now, usually bought for
2x invested capital or so.

~~~
rqebmm
> Knowing that mobile became a huge hit in 2010 doesn't really help the folks
> writing apps for NewtonScript in 1992 or Palm in 2000.

Which begs the question "were predictions too early, or were early executions
insufficient". There are a million examples of first movers who didn't
execute. Off the top of my head Yahoo, Blackberry, and IBM OS/2 were first to
market for generational techs and then lost.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Which begs the question "were predictions too early, or were early
> executions insufficient".

Its not A or B; its A, in part because of failure to correctly anticipate B.
Predicting market success is, inherently, a prediction of market participants
successful execution.

~~~
uola
To succeed you often have to get in early, which means that barrier to entry
will be low and competition will be extreme. Plenty of these things didn't
fail because they idea failed, but because they got beaten by another company,
or a simpler or more advanced technology. I think market success is a higher
bar than concept or technology success. Which probably means it is more
relevant for discussions (more qualified discussion are better).

I said this in another thread. We know that self-driving cars are gong to be a
thing in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean that the effort a company
like Google makes today is going to be that valuable. It might be that when
full autonomy is ready for mass implementation, we already had cars running
around with (much cheaper) sensors for years. Since things like highway
autonomy and active safety systems are lower hanging fruit. On the other hand
if they gather enough patents and full autonomy explodes in 10 years, they
have a good position. There's all this complexity yet most of HN is like
"Google is the self-driving company".

------
tyre
This is a necessary, if painful, lesson.

I remember the layoffs right before leaving LivingSocial in 2012. A raw, human
catastrophe. Watching friends pack up their things, who had been sold on the
culture and vision of what the company could be, was an eye opening
experience.

This is why you focus on business fundamentals. Not because it is sexy, not
because you can tell ProductHunt about your run rate, and not because you want
impress investors.

Because if you fuck up, everyone who depends on you gets fucked.

A few words of advice:

\- Before you raise money, ask yourself if that valuation is realistic or
aspirational. If it is aspirational, know that you have to reach that
valuation without raising another cent, just to break even. Ask yourself if
you are default dead or alive.

\- Before you start a company, ask if it is solving a problem for customers or
your desire "to be an entrepreneur."

\- Before you hire anyone, ask if their position is a need to have or a nice
have. Like customers, few businesses can afford "nice to haves"

\- There is always capital available for businesses with strong fundamentals
who are solving real needs.

Layoffs are like throwing up from drinking. Not fun and nearly always your
(the founders/managers') fault.

\- Pace yourself.

\- Build a company you're proud of.

\- Build something that people need.

\- Growth is great for slide decks, but employees can't use it to pay rent.
Don't chase hypergrowth as an end in itself.

Markets can stay irrational far longer than you can stay solvent, but they can
also snap back to reality before you can wake-up.

~~~
DarkTree
Right now it seems like there are two reasons for creating a company. One is
for making a profitable business that creates wealth for the people invested.
Two is for creating a product or service that customers need or want. These
two revolve around servicing those invested, or the consumers of the
product/service, or both.

It's surprising to me that no one starts a company solely for creating an
amazing place to work. A great workplace and work would be the
product/service, and the employees the consumers of the product/service. Sure,
you would have to have paying customers to fuel it, but that could always be
secondary in some sense. Right now it seems like the workplace is secondary,
so why not swap it? I'm sure there are a nice subset of people who would take
less (even half) of their current salary just to work in a place that revolves
around them and their experience working.. which is the majority of most of
our days.

Viable? Probably not, but it's interesting to think about and trying to
imagine what that place would look like for you personally.

~~~
nostrademons
Google tries (tried? it's been a couple years, and the culture was changing
when I left) very hard to do that, and they actually have the money spigot to
make it work (for the most part).

The problem with the idea in general is that money usually flows from the
party deriving the benefit to the party providing it. So if the company's top
priority really was to provide a great place to work, then logically, the
employees should be paying it to work there. Indeed, places that are often
considered great places to work (Google, Palantir, Fog Creek, philanthropy,
non-profits, education) are often notorious for underpaying their workers
relative to where they could employ their skills elsewhere. If a company took
this to the logical extreme - making the employees the consumers of the
product/service - then it would cease to be "work", and would instead be a
"hobby/internship/volunteer/education/experience".

~~~
useflyer
"If a company took this to the logical extreme - making the employees the
consumers of the product/service - then it would cease to be "work", and would
instead be a "hobby/internship/volunteer/education/experience"."

Tangentially related, but an early strategy of the Ford motor co was to double
the standard factory wage of it's employees, so that the purchase of one of
its automobiles was within reach and seen as the bonus of employment. It did
wonders for their introduction of the automobile to America.

~~~
developer2
The pessimist in me wonders just how altruistic the intention behind the wages
in the Ford example was. If that were a modern example, I fear the rationale
from management would not be about putting the vehicles _within reach as an
_optional_ bonus_ , but rather that it would be an unwritten rule that
employees are _expected to purchase one_. Not buying the company's product?
Enjoy your status as an employee who doesn't "fit the company culture".

Realization: I have become extremely cynical in my middle years with all the
crap I've seen from employers. :/

~~~
icebraining
I share your suspicious. Before they raised their salaries, they were having
to hire 52k workers/year despite only having a 15k workforce, due to a
tremendous turnover. And the extra money wasn't free; you had to subject
yourself to the "Ford Sociological Department", whose 200 investigators would
make sure you complied with the company's rules: be married, keep your wife at
home, abstain from alcohol and to ask for permission before making serious
purchases (like buying that Ford car).

~~~
77pt77
Very interesting indeed

[http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-
polic...](http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-
his-wo-1549625731)

------
lanestp
Since I'm old and I went through the .com crash (I didn't get to participate
in the boom) I hope my input is valid. This feels like more of a correction
than a disaster.

The job market has been super easy and mediocre workers have been commanding
excessive salaries because of various socio-economic forces (high valuations
and cost of living). At some point there had to be a cull of bad startups and
workers. It's unfortunate for the individuals and companies involved but I
think in a couple years we will be through this and it won't have been so bad.

~~~
zeemonkee3
The problem is that these crashes hurt both good and bad workers.

Every week you see the nth article posted here on how hiring is broken, from
HR filtering to recruiters to interviewing. So how do good developers survive,
if their skills and experience are essentially worthless in an opaque hiring
process?

One common answer is "networking" but that's a non-developer skill- a mediocre
developer could be better at networking (maybe correlated - he's in the bar
handing out business cards rather than working on his latest side project). A
lot of good people get hurt in a downturn and either leave the industry or end
up in low-paying, mediocre jobs just to hang on.

~~~
eva1984
It is not a problem. It will HAVE to happen at some point.

Maybe the downturn of the market will drive companies to be pragmatic when
choosing candidate, instead of trying to humiliate them with whiteboard
teasers.

Nevertheless, I don't think there is that much you and I can do about this,
not the market, nor the hiring processes. What stays unchanged is when looking
for a job, don't put eggs in one bucket.

~~~
zeemonkee3
If companies aren't pragmatic now, when supposedly demand outstrips supply,
why would they change when conditions are reversed? I suspect they'd just
double down and network will become even more important (you'll have more
unemployed friends needing a hand).

~~~
eva1984
Yeah, network will be more important. I think they will stop looking at
resumes that are not from internal referrals. And probably still some boring
whiteboarding questions after that.

But my hypothesis is, they would really try to hire someone with experience,
because they won't spend time training him/her, just like what happens in the
IC industry.

------
thedevil
If I'm understanding the article, there was a net increase of 2400 jobs in the
quarter. That's still pretty good. (Edit: it may seem gloomy by comparing to
2015, which seemed like an extremely good year). I googled a little because I
was curious and found this:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/percapita](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/percapita)

San Jose #1, that looks good. Although San Francisco....

~~~
r00fus
Are these postings or actual jobs filled?

~~~
thedevil
I assumed postings but not sure. It's just the most interesting google result
I got looking around on this.

Edit: I meant that my indeed link was about postings. My assumption was that
the 2400 figure (800/month) from the article was net jobs added, not postings.

~~~
esmi
"Vitner's analysis of state employment data showed that Bay Area tech firms
added only 800 jobs a month in the first quarter of 2016"

I was going to post the same thing as your parent post but I think the source
is state data so probably not postings. Maybe that what the numbers in the
DE9C are for...

------
justinsingh
My dad got laid off from the Fremont Western Digital location just the other
day ago. He saw it coming as they were warned layoffs would keep coming (WD
has been laying off workers since the middle of last year, I think). So
luckily we moved to a nearby city with substantially lower housing prices than
in San Jose, where we were spending lots more than we could justify on
housing. If we had stayed in San Jose, we would be in some real big financial
troubles- pretty much game over. But where we live now (which is actually in a
house of the same size, just significantly cheaper) we are living more
comfortably and happier without the stress of living in such an expensive
city.

Anyone living in an expensive city with a layoff seeming imminent should
really be thinking on the long term about where it's best for their family to
live. Going day to day wondering if you'll be able to keep your house is not a
healthy way to live.

~~~
tostitos1979
Can you mention cities with a better cost of housing? Genuinely curious ...
Gilroy is cheap but seems way too far.

~~~
justinsingh
I am referring to Gilroy. The distance seems "too far" but it's something you
adapt to rather quickly. Pretty much everyone in my neighborhood works in tech
at Cupertino and surrounding areas. If you're able to work around leaving
during rush hour traffic then that's even better.

~~~
CodeCube
I'm really hoping that more companies embrace remote workers ... so that it
doesn't matter _where_ you live

------
dmode
This article is very confusing to me. If we are concluding that startups are
laying off due to funding squeeze, how is that San Francisco actually saw a
decrease in lay offs ? SF is where most of the startups are based. Also, it
says that layoffs totaled roughly 3000 in 4 months. Which comes down to 750 a
month. Compare this to what the article said later that 32,000 jobs were lost
per month during the recession. Finally, I couldn't figure how many jobs were
added in this period, to get a context of the layoff percentage. Seems a
little alarmist

~~~
ajmurmann
I feel similarly. However, the article points out reporting differences for
differently large companies and layoffs. That might factor in heavily. Would
be nice though of the article had explicitly addressed that.

------
YZF
"Today the Bay Area's total employment of 3,353,600 as of the end of March
still reflects job growth, with 102,600 workers added from March 2015 through
March 2016."

The sky is not quite falling yet. There are many parts of the economy that are
stalling and the impact on that is felt in companies that sell products into
those markets. How things will develop is anyone's guess. I feel "Tech" will
keep growing though some areas that perhaps were historically considered
"Tech" might shrink. If you look at all the great things we can do with
technology I think a lot of stuff is still ahead of us. It's just the natural
way that things don't always go smoothly.

------
danso
FYI if you're interested in the raw data from which this story is ostensibly
based in part, I've dumped it into this Github repo:

[https://github.com/datahoarder/ca-warn](https://github.com/datahoarder/ca-
warn)

------
sickbeard
The mobile wave is ending and we are in the middle of the dip preceding the
next big "thing". A lot of companies are betting on IoT but these are mostly
service companies pushing their own proprietary stacks, which is why I think
IoT is a dead-end because there is either no demand for the hardware or the
hardware is at a price point that makes no financial sense.

~~~
Bartweiss
I think joelonsoftware predicted a lot of the IoT failures a decade ago with
this piece:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html)

There are lots of companies that seem to be looking entirely at how IoT can
help _them_ , without actually considering whether their _customers_ benefit.
There was a group at CES offering an IoT propane tank valve. It gathers user
data, great, but who the hell wants to sink $50 into a smart valve for their
grill?

An awful lot of the these companies are offering tiny value propositions to
users, and expecting that they'll pay for the chance to give up their data.
The "smart grid" is a wonderful dream, but when no two pieces integrate you're
just selling some shitty wifi monitors.

------
20years
Can any of you from the Bay Area comment on if you have found it harder to
find jobs lately? Are recruiters reaching out less than they did last year?

I would be interested in hearing from some of you that have been laid off.
Have you found another job in the Bay Area or did you have to leave?

~~~
lethain
As a hiring manager in SF, my anecdotal experience is that most large
companies are still hiring at the same pace they were a year ago, but that
capital and subsequently hiring has dried up for smaller companies.

For experienced developers/managers, things seem to be business as usual, but
in particular the "top tier" companies generally are more focused on avoiding
false positives than in reducing false negatives, so I see us as entering a
slightly unpleasant period for non-traditional and entry-level candidates.

~~~
pelhage
As a "non-traditional" (self-taught) and "entry-level" candidate who who just
moved to SF a week ago (crashing on my bro's couch), I've been nervous as hell
about my prospects.

If anyone has any advice other than "go back home", it'd be much appreciated.

~~~
eru
Befriend some Googlers, do lots of mock interviews with them, then go for
Google. (Some for Facebook etc.) They still got oodles of cash.

~~~
johnward
Doesn't Google still but a lot of weight on your degree? Sounds like a waste
of time to me.

~~~
eru
I work for them without one.

------
dexterdog
Krikey - Ghostery blocked 21 instances of a detected video player network on
that page. What an overloaded mess.

~~~
danso
I have to give them props...I've been using AdBlock on Chrome, which seems to
do just fine on major sites...this is the first time in a long while that I've
visited a news site and seen a pop-up autoplay video ad.

~~~
mevile
It's tough times for local news.

~~~
dexterdog
...And interesting times for ad blockers.

------
green_lunch
If your company still isn't profitable and needs that next round of VC to
survive, be very worried.

I've seen the signs and gone through multiple layoffs over the years.

------
icdxpresso
How worried should an entry level developer who has been working only 6 months
at his current company be? Due to an extremely high cost of living, paying all
my bills and student loans and such, I have very little money actually saved
up. If I lost my job I'd have to pack my bags and move out of Silicon Valley
ASAP. And I really haven't accomplished that much at work during the past 6
months because I joined during holiday season and pretty much spent like 3
months training. I'd be really fucked if I got laid off now.

~~~
dredmorbius
Be concerned. Have a plan.

Consider attacking your living expenses. Request a rent reduction from your
landlord -- you're a known entity, and they're more likely to offer this if
you ask than if you don't, and them more they've heard that request. Look at
roommate situations. Don't make any big purchases. _Do_ put away an emergency
stash.

One of the big problems the Bay Area faces right now is one that attacks its
ongoing attractiveness as a tech hub: technical labour is losing its
flexibility. Employment is contracting, slightly, but housing is _so_
expensive that virtually nobody has any personal runtime if the paychecks
stop. A considerable exodus _from_ the area may make it less attractive in
future. It's one thing to take a new job down the street, or even switch
between San Jose and SF or SF and Oakland. It's another to shuttle back and
forth, with household wares, from Cleveland to Palo Alto, every 6-18 months.

It's also an opportunity for a new low-cost hub to establish itself. One with
what makes SV tick, but doesn't have its problems.

Unfortunately, most of the candidate destinations lack the legal environment,
particularly labour law, which made SV so attractive. It's possible locations
outside the US might emerge, though I'm not sure where that might be either.

I'm not calling the end of SV, that would be idiotic (until its not, at which
point it will be inspired). But the hub _is_ entering a period of distinct
vulnerability.

~~~
ghaff
That's the big issue. Multiple $Ks/mo in rent, if you haven't already built up
a nice nest egg, make it really hard to ride out a period of unemployment.
(And, indeed, make it really risky to bet on something coming along if there's
a general downturn.)

I'm less convinced of the uniqueness of SV and the role of labor laws. Places
like Massachusetts are doing pretty well these day. (And, indeed, housing near
the city isn't cheap either.) This in spite of EMC and certain other employers
torpedoing anti-non-compete legislation. But, then, a lot of Boston-area
employers don't necessarily put non-compete's in place even though they're
more enforceable than in CA.

~~~
dredmorbius
Noncompetes and a great many issues, along with a general sense of disgust at
the tech world, and a growing sentiment that it's not delivering on addressing
Big Problems[1], all have me sitting out for now.

But the thought of dealing with any of a number of hassles, ranging from
commutes to housing frustrations to highly uncertain employment to outright
labour-hostile legal codes (and even in light of those, vastly worse
employment contracts) has me reduced to essentially zero interest in even
considering the game.

Massachussets, New York, Texas, and North Carolina have all done an exemplary
job of eliminating themselves from any and all consideration. California's
simply not affordable where there's work, and there's no work where it's
affordable. Europe's a mess.

Altair IV is looking pretty good.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. See for example,
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/38skua/what_ar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/38skua/what_are_the_big_problems_2015_edition/)

------
m1117
We're actively hiring. If you were one of that let go people, please reach out
to [https://sendsonar.com](https://sendsonar.com)

~~~
tariqali34
We're actively hiring too. If you need a job, just visit our website at
[http://example.com](http://example.com).

No need to explain how much we'll pay you per year, how long the interview
process is, how likely it is that we'll hire you after the interview, how well
we treat work-life balance, whether our company is dependent on venture
capital, whether our company is even remotely close to generating profits...or
even what the company _actually does_. We assume that you're
desperate...ahem... _brave_ enough for a job that'll you click on our
hyperlink and reach out to us.

------
client4
While it's sad to see people being laid off, on the bonus side there are jobs
elsewhere in the country that could use great engineers. I know in Helena
Montana there are a number of companies looking for engineers. It's a great
fit for those who enjoy great beer and the outdoors.

~~~
busterarm
Any willing to pay relocation? :D

------
lordxenu
A lot of these comments have stated the surface level of what is happening.
That is, these companies have failed based on bad business
tactics/marketshare, over-valuation, etc... And that the employees being laid
off are just the tech-bubble fallout, but will be okay 'because jobs are
aplenty' or that they'll just have to reapply themselves in some other job
sector.

However, what we don't see is the terms of the layoff that the employees are
forced into. Generally, employees don't have a say in what they get in their
layoff package, and many times it is not a fair amount in comparison to the
work they do and in comparison to what management is getting. In addition,
employees generally have to sign a legal document that prevents them from
defaming the work practices/management/etc of the company. Either they sign
and get their package, or they get nothing at all. I'm basing this on accounts
from personal friends who have worked in startups, and although I'm speaking
from an anecdotal point of view, I don't see what other data points we can
draw from given that no one is allowed to speak out legally.

The bottom line is, we will always be screwed over since we lack basic worker
protections. We can talk about bad management and how that can be solved, but
ultimately I think each and every one of us need to collectively force a set
of protections for workers. Either through law or by forming a strong
collective. Until then, this cycle will continue.

------
motolouda
it's mostly Yahoo at this point, which is no surprise there. We've (I've) also
seen bubbles burst a couple times in this industry, and it'll do it again. I
wonder how long it will take before we figure out not to throw money at bad
ideas, overhire, and value companies at much more than they're actually worth.
Eh, probably never. Oh well, viva la recession!

------
grimmdude
What's unclear to me is if these are all 'tech positions' or just positions at
tech companies.

~~~
elliotec
That is a very good point. At my previous company, they had some struggles and
laid off a bunch of marketing and random business people, but every single
developer kept their job.

------
chrisper
So, I am graduating next year and I have no internship experience (wasn't able
to get one for this summer for whatever reasons). How doomed am I? Hopefully,
by the time I am done, there is still at least one job left :(

Although, I guess finding a job might be easier since I am willing to relocate
etc.

~~~
mulcahey
If you have some other stuff to show for yourself beyond a transcript you
should be just fine.

There are still TONS of places hiring that just aren't big sexy brands.

~~~
chrisper
Cool, thanks!

------
imron
Those comments.... wow.

~~~
kin
Right? I feel like there's no way to get a good legitimate discussion on any
article w/o a community like HN or reddit that cares about their arbitrary
karma system.

------
tmuir
How many of the Santa Clara county layoffs were from Intel?

------
CryoLogic
In Seattle almost no companies have been hiring entry level devs for several
months.

Fortune 500 not excluded.

Could it be lay-offs from CA migrating down to WA?

~~~
RyJones
Qualcomm just closed the Seattle and Bellevue offices over the last year, and
Intel is doing the same.

------
NirDremer
"Ah, I see one can use the "big multiple of a tiny number" trick for bad news
too." Marc Andreessen

[https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/730990038939361280](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/730990038939361280)

------
stephenr
I've only read 2 comments so far, and already my brain is melting from the
ridiculous buzzwords.

------
vasu_man
Keep Calm and Be in Infrastructure

------
JoshTriplett
For anyone completely unable to view the article because it hangs trying to
load: if you have HTTPS Everywhere installed, try disabling the
"MNGInteractive" rule.

------
sjg007
There's layoffs and there's going out of business.

------
repler
Easiest way to increase profits is to cut some staff. Payroll is a huge
expense for just about every company out there.

------
lsiebert
It might be interesting to consider what layoffs cost companies in terms of
confidence and morale.

------
eruditely
This sort of stuff is going to happen one way or the other, no industry is
immune from this.

------
steven2012
Most of the companies came from older tech companies like Yahoo, Intel, etc
which had slow growth anyway so they probably aren't responsible for the vast
increase of jobs over the last 5 years.

I'm curious what the layoff situation is like for start-ups though since they
don't need to report for the WARN act.

~~~
bagels
WARN act applies to companies of 100 or more employees, startup or not.

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known
One more reason to support
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world)

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tn13
Let us not panic here. Unlike 10 years ago most tech companies are taking more
risk, investing more capital and building more products. Obviously they are
going to hire more and fire more as some of the projects succeed and some fail
?

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BadassFractal
I wouldn't worry about it too much, we have enough unquenchable thirst for
filling positions here in the Bay that all of these folks will be quickly and
gainfully employed again. One of our local strengths is that the cycle of life
here is alive and well. We'll recycle like we always have, nothing goes to
waste.

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bunkydoo
I don't understand why people feel the need to saturate the bay area to
compete for generally sub-par living conditions and only slightly above
average pay. Everytime I ask someone why they are living and working there -
they answer something along the lines of "to get rich and move out of here"
this type of mentality is why the bay is the suicide capital of the world,
unfortunately.

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thrownaway2424
Say what? The counties of the Bay Area are all well below the national average
suicide rate (age adjusted, per capita CDC data). Explore for yourself at [1].
How did you arrive at this odd belief?

1:
[https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/mapModuleInterf...](https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/mapModuleInterface.jsp)

