According to Tech World layoff tracking site, Layoffs.

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288 tracked tech companies have laid off 87,749 people in

23 so far, just a little over one month into the year, and in 2022, 142 tracked tech companies

laid off 159,76 employees.

That's a lot of layoffs, and although folks working in this jumble of loosely connected industries,

which are generally categorized as tech companies because of how the market values their stock

and future money-making potential, often buying shares in the companies at something

like 10 to 20 or more times their current formula-derived value, rather than the 1.5 or 2 or maybe 3

or 4 times the value, as is common with non-tech companies like traditional automakers or

security companies or whatever else. Although folks working

at such companies tend to make pretty decent money compared to those working at other companies

because there's just more resources sloshing around in these spaces than incomparable non-tech

identified spaces. Each and every one of these layoffs is still a potential tragedy for the person

who was let go. Sometimes with a few months severance, sometimes with less than that, sometimes with ongoing health care for a while, sometimes without, which in the United States in particular can be a serious problem for some people.

This year-plus long wave of layoffs, then, has been a slow-moving disaster for many people working in an array of

corporate entities, making this a pretty widespread churn. And this churn could lead to some

interesting, perhaps even positive, medium-term consequences, like freeing up more tech-oriented

talent to work at often talent-deprived, non-profits and government organizations.

But we still don't know if the bottom has truly fallen out of these industries yet,

and we don't know for certain that these folks won't simply be scooped up by other tech entities,

perhaps remaining on tenuous footing for a while, because these layoffs seem to be ongoing,

...