Who's firing? (Oracle, SpaceX): Who's hiring? (Sony, Glassdoor): Taking the temperature of engineering employment as we look back on the first quarter of 2019 - [Spectral Lines]

Were more engineering jobs created or lost in the first months of 2019? The biggest news came in March, when Oracle Corp. started clear-cutting engineers around the world. The layoff news came via employee reports, not an official Oracle announcement, and overall numbers are still unclear. Worldwide layoff numbers were initially pegged from 500 to several thousand, and estimates suggested that around 100 positions would be eliminated in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. That number, at least, turned out to be low. Oracle, in late March, alerted the California Employment Development Department (EDD) that its cuts included 255 positions in its Redwood City offices and 97 in Santa Clara. ¶ Other layoff notices drizzled across Silicon Valley offices. But the numbers, generally in the hundreds, weren't exactly a downpour. The numbers posted in hiring announcements were typically higher—and mostly described openings outside the San Francisco Bay Area. ¶ Cloudy with scattered layoffs in California: PayPal filed plans with the EDD to cut 183 jobs, mostly in software engineering. SAP likewise filed layoff plans, indicating that it will cut 446 California jobs, also mostly in software. ¶ Thinfilm Electronics announced worldwide staff cuts, including 54 Bay Area professionals, reported to be mostly hardware engineers. ¶ Western Digital Corp. announced a layoff of 211 staff members in Silicon Valley and another 100 in Irvine, Calif. The company indicated that most, though not all, of the layoffs involve engineering jobs, including dozens in its SanDisk division and some 50 from R&D operations. ¶ Cybersecurity toolmaker McAfee cut 200 employees from its Silicon Valley offices in late January and early February, with layoffs affecting sales and finance as well as engineering. ¶ Apple cut 190 workers from its Silicon Valley self-driving car division. The cuts included both software and hardware engineers, as well as at least one machine-learning expert. ¶ In Southern California, SpaceX announced plans to lay off hundreds of its employees, with cuts amounting to about 10 percent of its workforce. The breakdown included 97 engineers, 174 technicians, and a handful of other tech jobs.