Bay Area Tech Firms Laying Off 1,200 Workers By Memorial Day (mercurynews.com) 117
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.
Who cares? (Score:2)
This isn't any big layoffs or anything. Heck, they had to push multiple large companies together to get to 1200 jobs. This could be a simply be get rid of people they don't want and rehire in other more key groups. Who knows. Seem like a non event.
I've read the individual stories (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Learn to do Journalism? (Score:2)
After all, the journalists are constantly encouraging others to invade the tech fields. Maybe it's time to encourage people to invade the journalism field.
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Yep, the EA reputation for quality software is only going to get better.
Or it could be those companies suck (Score:4, Interesting)
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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Yeah.. for Oracle and SAP and to a lesser degree PayPal these layoffs are rounding errors.. SAP has 97K employees Oracle has 137K.. 446/96498 = 0.46%; 352/137000 = 0.26%. Being laid off is definitely meaningful to the employEE but those are meaningless numbers for the employER in this case. PayPal gets up to a whopping 1% with 183/18700.
The other companies those numbers are WAY more meaningful like.. are they going out of business? If the numbers I'm finding are accurate Instacart is dumping like half of t
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No, that's when single companies are laying off 3000+ people at a time.
No, they do that after the recession starts. It's one of the flags used to indicate "hey, there's a recession going on".
Recession start dates are always set after-the-fact. We don't know we're actually in one until we look back on the data months later.
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That never stopped a CEO from anticipating a recessionary trend that directly affects his industry. Corporations stock up employees to anticipate industry growth. If you "know" that growth is unlikely, there's no reason to be "flush" with infrastructure employees.
Would you like a packet of crisps with... (Score:2)
Your half pint of bitter?
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it's Instacart that is having trouble, not the economy.
I also suspect that at least part of Instacart's problem is that Walmart is now offering the same service at their stores, but without the significant markup that Instacart imposes.
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Hey bud. Nuke your sig.
Re:I've read the individual stories (Score:5, Interesting)
EA is dying. Oracle is dying. SAP is dying.
This isn't some broader problem in this case, these are just companies struggling to stay relevant.
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SAP or Oracle run the accounting dept. for almost every large company. They're far from dying. There hasn't been a new company entering this domain in several decades. Accounting isn't going away.
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SAP or Oracle run the accounting dept. for almost every large company. They're far from dying. There hasn't been a new company entering this domain in several decades. Accounting isn't going away.
Publicly traded corporations die (well, get acquired) when they stop growing. Oracle will actually be shrinking soon enough, as the Oracle DB isn't exactly loved.
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I can't speak for the other companies but as long as Madden is the massively successful game franchise that it is, EA isn't going anywhere.
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I can't speak for the other companies but as long as Madden is the massively successful game franchise that it is, EA isn't going anywhere.
You forget it's a publicly traded corporation Those die not when they go bankrupt, but when they stop growing. Madden/FIFA is a cash cow, to be sure, but EA is already milking that cash cow so hard it's getting legal pushback. There's no growth in revenue coming there.
EA has closed most of the studios they've ever acquired, and tend to lose partners. New sequels to existing games generally produce a bit less revenue each year, relative to the size of the market. To gorw, EA needs new franchises, which m
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No, you don't understand what you're talking about.
If a company has a steady revenue stream then it will not fail. In other words, as long as profits exceed expenses there is no failure happening.
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But Netcraft is alive and kicking.
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Also EA just fired a bunch. In all cases they're firing engineers. The sort of people you need to keep the company going.
No, the sort of people you can get in Vietnam or India for half the price.
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Re: I've read the individual stories (Score:2)
Then why not invest in stocks and come out the winner every ten years instead of the loser? You maybe aren't the 1% (neither am I), but each ten year cycle should give you an opportunity to climb that rank significantly.
The U.S. is a capitalist nation. When in Rome, do as the Romans. When in America, become a capitalist.
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Everytime it happens the middle class takes a permanent pay cut and a hit to their assets and the 1% scoops those pay,
Its only been that way in "our" lifetime, or the workplace post Ronald Reagan.
What bothers me is the banking crash in 2007-2008. In previous eras, when banks screwed up (savings & loans crash in the 1980's), somebody went to prison. The 2007 crash was caused by the deregulation from the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, and the Fed Reserve/Treasury/Congress permitting the use of derivatives to get around loan regulations. Leave it to the investment banks to bitch about reckless "subprime" loan lendin
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This could be a simply be get rid of people they don't want and rehire in other more key groups.
According to TFA, these are net reductions, at least in California.
So it is either a real reduction, or they may be shifting jobs out of state or offshore.
And... (Score:2)
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Cut the fat (Score:1)
Hopefully they are getting rid of the dumbasses diversity and inclusion officers, and all those other non value add roles.
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H1BÃ(TM)s,
Hey Anonymous Coward - The "Preview" button is there for a reason. Use it.
Re: Cut the fat (Score:2)
Slashdot mobile still does not have Preview functionality.
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You suck at haikus
More than a dyspeptic sloth
On midwinter's day
Is that a lot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Local news blog. (Score:2)
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Slow news? How about this -- it sucks to get laid off, but what's your opinion on the best month to be laid off in, in the US, from an office job?
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Slow news? How about this -- it sucks to get laid off, but what's your opinion on the best month to be laid off in, in the US, from an office job?
September. The weather is still nice but not too hot, and you can enjoy it since you aren't working. Plus September is still baseball season and you have college football.
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I got fired in March. And then hired in March.
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Same year?
Any month in SF (Score:2)
it sucks to get laid off, but what's your opinion on the best month to be laid off in, in the US, from an office job?
In SF any month is fine, since you can just go get a job the next day and the weather will pretty much be the same whenever.
Recession coming... (Score:2)
Oh good, more homeless people in San Fran (Score:4, Funny)
Also in Baltimore (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Also in Baltimore (Score:2)
Years ago I did some brief consulting work at PayPal headquarters in San Jose. So far as I could see, they employed zero engineers who were US citizens.
I remember when I was laid off from Cisco (Score:1)
My coworkers and I all got 6 month severances, "help" in finding new positions, and use of the office while we transitioned. Nobody ever needed help because we all got jobs in less then 3 weeks. Most of us got raises for doing basically the same jobs elsewhere + 6 months salary + all vacations paid out.
Whenever people complain about Silicon Valley life as an engineer I always point them toward this effect. Silicon Valley has a very unorthodox form of job security... but it's real never the less. What wo
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My favorite thing about living in Silicon Valley is living in an RV. It's like a vacation very day.
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This is why I was never interested in working for any of those big companies that setup shop out in the middle of nowhere. Makes it impossible to have a life that isn't entirely dependent on a single employer.
Its also why it was a very easy sell for me to be convinced to leave a "normal" job several years ago and move across the country to work at a startup in Silicon Valley. Just having the opportunity to "insert" myself into the SV job market was worth it alone. (Before I moved, I was basically invisible
Just wait for it (Score:5, Insightful)
In a few months, they'll be lobbying for more H-1Bs claiming they are short on tech workers.
How many are hiring? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How many are hiring? (Score:5, Funny)
In Oracle's case, those are probably all lawyers.
They're all hiring (Score:2)
As an added bonus it lets them go to Congress every year and claim there's X million positions open they'd just love to fill but there aren't enough Americans and pretty please can w
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And hopefully, Congress will remember what happened today and tell them to go fuck themselves. They shit in their salad; they can eat it.
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More likely Congress will react by coming up with legislation making it much easier to get cheap "talent" from overseas.
Translation: More jobs to India (Score:3, Informative)
Because we know none of these "great" companies can bear paying market wages for services.
Routine Stack Ranking Cull (Score:1)
This is normal. They've just completed their annual 9-Block and are culling the red boxes.
Nothing to see here, move along.
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