After a lull around Thanksgiving, December has seen some of the biggest layoffs in the tech industry yet since the economy entered its tailspin in the fall. Our Layoff Tracker is now past 100,000 lost jobs (109,629, as of this writing) across nearly 300 different technology and media companies both large and small. To put this in perspective, Citigroup alone announced 52,000 layoffs in November, and across the U.S. economy, just counting September and October, there were nearly 500,000 unemployment claims as a result of mass layoffs (data isn’t in yet for November or December).
December, though, has seen no let-up in the number of tech jobs being eliminated. Sony announced 8,000 layoffs on Tuesday, AT&T topped that with 12,000 the week before, and Alacatel-Lucent added another 1,000 today. Yahoo’s previously announced layoffs of 1,500 employees took effect this week, and Cnet saw the brunt of the estimated 275 layoffs across CBS interactive (although other units, such as Last.fm, were not spared).
Pink slips were also passed out at Divx (21), Silicon Graphics (160), and Sandisk (300). But the single worst day so far was December 4th, when 18,816 tech jobs disappeared. Most of those (12,000) came from AT&T, but on that day layoffs hit Real Networks (130), IBM Japan (2,500), Viacom (850), NBC (500), and Careerbuilder (300)
If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it’s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article. (For those more interested in who is hiring, check out our job board).
The layoff amounts are staggering.
Our company, TurnHere, a profitable, Venrock & Hearst-backed internet video production and platform company, is fortunately still hiring.
We’re based in Emeryville, right outside of San Francisco, and we’re looking for some Senior Web Engineers/Architects and Sales/BD people.
If you know of any superstars that were unfortunately laid off that fit those job titles have them send their email to shane.smith (at) turnhere (dot) com.
http://layofftalent.com/ seems to be for this purpose although there’s not many people on it yet.
http://www.jobs.../savemainstreet
The critical issue now is to identify companies which are still providing opportunities to those who need them.
We are still reaching out to more employers to be part of the action to save main street!
Oh don’t worry Morgan, the economy is saving your “Turn” for dessert in 2009.
Maybe, I’m just trying to help folks who may be looking for something right now.
l think you should be worry morgan
http://www.eskibirsaat.com
I’m worried – I’m just saying that I know of jobs that are available now.
Most of these tech companies have obviously got far to many employees for what they are producing.
i think so to
The problem may have been in the fact that many of these companies were doing so well that they hired everybody and their brother to handle workloads that should have been parsed out to a few departments. Than again, the economy is in a free fall, so who am I to talk?
http://www.date...a.wordpress.com
Nice chart.
That’s about 100,000 new startups TC will be getting press releases from in ‘09. It’ll be like a tech baby boom!
I like your attitude and I got to agree, though I don’t think the number will be quite that high… not everybody can cut it in the real world.
Jon
http://DreamClue.com …get the message!
I don’t think we have seen the worse of it, 2009 is not looking much better in terms of the trends. Some forecast 2010 if we are luck before things turn around. I sure Obama can turn things around quickly.
I wish we had a big mit to catch some of the talent that is becoming available.
Now is the time to pick up some really great people.
I found refuge working for an adult website. The money is good, both for the company and for the worker.
Don’t rule it out, we’re driving most of the web traffic anyway.
Hey do you get to hob nob with the adult stars of the opposite sex. If so sign me up now for work at an adult web site. I feel I need to do something vaguely sleazy to survive anyway.
At least it beats my marijuana plantation idea.
just a few observations…
1 – why does everyone (commentors) seem to assume that these layoffs imply lots of extra talent out there? the reality is a whole lot of mediocre people just lost their jobs with a handful of quality ones…
2 – how many jobs were created in this time? tracking layoffs without hiring numbers is a little misleading, since many job firings are very natural.
3 – many of these layoffs aren’t really related to the downturn. companies like SGI and RealNetworks were shedding regardless, etc.
You make some really good points. Some of what’s happening may end up shedding the dead weight.
http://www.date...a.wordpress.com
I usually don’t care what/how people respond to postings like this, but you come off sounding like an arrogant ass who is clearly currently employed.
If you were cut, would you have said the same thing?
I am gainfully employed, but if I weren’t and I read your post I would have perhaps questioned my own value as a human being. “Could it be that I am mediocre?”
My point here is to watch what you say and try to have consideration for the many folks who are probably having a rough time reconciling a difficult loss in their lives.
-and Merry Christmas
You tell ‘em, Dood.
@Jeremy’s right. Plenty of folks are getting back to basics in their business, not necessarily a bad thing. However I don’t think this is the same kind of bloodletting as we saw in the last bust. Remember how folks from all walks of life ended up in startups digging for gold?
Kind of funny how this post replaces what I’m used to seeing: ‘company(stockprice/ticker)’ with ‘company(dearlydeparted)’.
CG
Hopefully things will turn around and companies will start hiring again.
Your count is less than useful.
You count the layoffs at Sony et al as “tech” layoffs,but many of the people losing their jobs aren’t techs. At the same time, you’re missing the techs who have lost their jobs as part of the layoff at non-tech companies, such as the tech division at A-B InBev this week.
Ironic that Careerbuilder had layoffs
Still ain’t no dotcom bust, that was brutal
Dotcom bust or not. this crisis is bad enough
that’s a staggering number. whats interesting though is that amongst all of these layoffs, we’re still seeing a number of companies hiring and taking advantage of this outpour of talent. I think it’s very narrow-minded to say that anybody who was let go is mediocre.
Boris
http://www.askbinc.com
Imagine if I have the power to recruit all folks who are currently unemployed. Would I be a hero?
I was laid off this morning along with most of our IT dept.
The company decided it would be better to outsource our enterprise app.
unfortunately, it appears it’s gonna get worse before it gets better…..
I’m fortunate to work for a mid-size company (little over 250 last head count not counting contractors) where things are going well. We’re actually continuing to grow right now, though albeit at a slower pace than a few months ago.
I agree with a lot that’s been said. A lot of unfortunate, hard working folks are losing their livelyhood right now. And it does not show any signs of getting better anytime soon. Yes, menial employees will be the first to go, but they certainly don’t make up the majority of people let go. I could easily use an extra two or three people working for me just to get current and maybe be a little proactive with my workload rather than always being reactive.
However, one point I want to make and that ’scoville’s’ post made me think of is outsourcing. While I suppose it can make sense for start-ups to outsource coding or web design, it’s killing this country in all industries, not just tech. Maybe Obama will really come through and close the corporate tax loopholes that give US based companies a break for outsourcing jobs.
And before anyone chimes in with, “oh, they’ll just move to another country and setup shop there,” no, they won’t. Good luck doing business in any other country outside of the US without rampant corruption, kickbacks and cronyism far worse than we’ve ever known here. If things were that good elsewhere, the US would already be a desolate wasteland as corporations would’ve bailed on this country and taken our jobs with them a long time ago.
/rant off
Didn’t expect the bubble cycle is so short these years.
Employers don’t want to pay out the X-mas bonuses, so they are firing pre-Christmas.
Let’s see if we cross 1Million by end of 2009.
This it far short of the number of IT workers displaced, because it doesn’t include layoffs by non-IT companies. For instance, Hertz just laid off 500+ in Oklahoma City, and is closing their data center by outsourcing it overseas.
That number doesn’t count in the total above because Hertz isn’t what TechCrunch would call a Tech Company, but the effect on technology workers is the same.
The pain in the industry is much larger than TechCrunch is stating here.
As to whether it’s just a shedding of dead weight, I’d classify it as a shedding of ‘dead weight management’.
I’m noticing that only companies where the IT workers understood that management was either selfish or stupid have the collapses occurred.
For instance, at Chesapeake Energy, whose IT department is huge and the company even larger, they are committed to no layoff through 2010. The CEO has taken steps that have hammered the stock value, all to insure that he can continue to operate the company with the very long term in mind. Love it!
Tech companies? Who cares. Most of us work in the real world, where it’s all about quality of management.
100,000 = The number of H1B’s hired in ‘08 + just 15K of the L1’s. If we’d suspend or eliminate the H1B program altogether and put strict controls on the L1 program we’d be fine. Of course, if we hadn’t let those programs balloon out of control to gut the upside for US engineers and facilitate outsourcing, the number of layoffs may have been much lower.
@Shannon
Totally agree. Every single “dead weight” comment is usually put forward by a moronic corksucker that isn’t a technologist, entrepreneur or startup veteran. What defines mediocre in the silicon valley? Mediocre here means exceptional anywhere else. Regardless of what you think of Real or Msft or google or yahoo, you don’t get thru the recruiting process bc they were hiring for dead weight. The sheer time it takes to recruit 2000 tech employees is massive. To say that they made that many accidental hires across the entire valley is just plain fraud. As for startups, there simply isn’t room or time to hire deadweight. It doesn’t exist. Sure people maybe obstructionist or unqualified for their positions but that is true across all corporate America since the industrial revolution.
The point is that if the economy were to suddenly turn the other direction and NASDAQ was headed toward 5000 again and your portfolio was hamstrung bc companies weren’t hiring fast enough to capture the opportunity those same assholes would be clammoring to make yahoo “hire faster!!!”
In other words the fuckwads who say stupid crap like “cut the deadweight” are usually people who only watch stock prices and care not a wit for delivering an actual product. They’ve never done it and never will. They are interlopers to a dev process they cannot understand. Which us why they rely on inane platitudes served to them by cnbc zombies like maria bartolromo.
In these tough times we’re working hard to connect startup teams and talented professionals.
http://www.StartupAgents.com
Recession may have been the factor but we cannot say it as the potent factor in tech lay offs. Otherwise why would we be praising the competitiveness of students. I guess the blame is on the employee’s part, partly.
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I was considered a top 2% performer at a prior employer and when they were bought out I was politley told they had people that did my job. They called back a couple of months later wanting me to return, I had taken a position as a VP with a smaller company and declined their offer. Some really good people are getting cut from the team. It’s the economy stupid, don’t automaticaly assume everyone is just dead weight. You can spot those by their resume. The good people have families and desrve better, make an effort to find a new star employee.
People always hate to talk about when they are laid off. But as it has become every day’s news headline since Yahoo started it with cutting 1500 of its task force last year, now a need of platform has been in demand where people can express their selves in words how they are feeling about their company, whey the got laid off was that justified or not. And every thing they want to tell anonymously.
And http://www.layoffgossip.com is providing you that platform.
All these layoffs and yet Congress still allows 138,000 work visas each month and they want to increase that. Amazing.