It’s a reality of life in the risky high-tech world: even in good times, many startups go extinct. But when the economic environment turns harsh, as it certainly has this autumn, natural selection starts to speed up—with smaller, less established ventures as the first casualties. Even the companies fit enough to survive tough times find that cutting staff is the quickest way to conserve cash.
While Silicon Valley has probably suffered the most job losses so far, Xconomy’s home cities of Boston, Seattle, and San Diego are definitely feeling the pain. So we decided it was time to start tallying up the damage in each of those regions—1,363 layoffs in Boston, 1,382 in San Diego, and 920 in Seattle just since June. But those totals are just today’s snapshot—as we hear about additional company shutdowns and reductions-in-force, we will keep updating our Layoff Litany lists, and we’ll provide a running total at the bottom of each list.
We aren’t the first tech blog to weigh in with layoff trackers—TechCrunch and CNET are both doing a good job—but they’re attempting to track the entire high-tech universe. Here at Xconomy we wanted to focus on the economic picture in our own communities. A tip of the hat, however, to CNET’s Rafe Needleman for giving us the idea to publish these lists using Google Spreadsheets.
Please click on the links below for the city-specific layoff lists. Somewhat arbitrarily, we have limited our lists to layoffs announced in or after June, 2008. If you have corrections or additions for the Xconomy layoff trackers, please contact us at [email protected].
