My company just had a small layoff today. All the R&D people of the microprocessor division in Sanata Clara site are let go, including my friend Suzanne. We had quited the custom MIPS processor market and the remaining few guys are working on printer processors ASIC for HP. We all had expected this day will come just the matter of time. The margin of doing ASIC out-source from other company is really low and we have too many people here in Burnaby, so it is quite nature to move the jobs back to the HQ. There is no company wide announcement about this layoff, not even a single email. However people still somehow know the news thru different channels. I don’t feel bad for those guys, I heard that they have a good saverage pacakge, and the job market in Silicon Valley is doing fine. They should able to find another job without any problem. The most puzzling move is the company is offered to hire some of them back as contractors to finish the project they are working on. Why can’t the company wait until the project finish before letting them go?