Well, let's see: I personally know about 25 of the ...
... eighty contract marcomm employees who were shown the door @ 3M about three or four weeks ago ... new CEO instituted "zero budget" corp-wide policy shortly after Feb sales numbers were in ... no travel ... no product catalogs, data sheets, promotional brochures ... even the web site support was 'frozen' ... until -- if and when -- the economy 'picks up.'
Across the country, several large distributors -- some of whom you do biz with -- trimming corporate and branch staffing inside and outside sales, etc ...
Then I have a neighbor who went 'belly up' with carorder.com; took her four months to join ... APPL ... she's super qualified / employable ... in late 20s ... is now very nervous again ...
Then another neighbor has six good friends who were laid off @ VIGN.
Several acquaintances/biz colleagues in marketing and new prod development @ MOT (EEs) are frantically contacting headhunters/resume updating, etc ... I'm helping with resume updating for three of them.
A good friend @ 3M and I had an interesting discussion last week ... she pointed out that basically, everybody who relocated to this town any time since the early 80s is tech-employed in some fashion or another ... therefore, when the downsizing occurs -- and I see it escalating faster than on the way up -- everyone has the same skill sets.
So where are all of these new prod development EEs, tech support, tech-specialized marketing, HR, IT, manufacturing, accounting/finance, CSRs, purchasing professionals going to go?
San Jose? Uh ... nope ... more layoffs there than here. Research Triangle? Uh ... nope ... same story. Route 128? Seattle?
If they ain't hiring here, they sure as hell ain't hiring anywhere else, but instead are downsizing HQ ops and divisions based in every tech center in the country as well.
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