Yunno why people hate eBay, business practices. They layoff 1000 people and turn around and buy 2 companies. This pisses me off.

why?

why does eBay even need that many employees? They could probably run it the same way with only 10% of the people

I agree, their customer service hardly did anything when those pesky nigerians kept messing up my auctions.

layoffs are coming all over the bay area. whatever started with GOOG going public is now over in the markets. AAPL and GOOG are off 50% from the highs. YHOO is headed for 14 (congrats jerry, could of had 34). INTC is trading at levels from the 90s. and at least these companies can claim to be "in business". for the rest of the living-on-funding, maybe-one-day crowd, its time to read the tea leaves: the party is over

Far (not 10% worthy) fetched but could this also be related to them improving operational automation?

I thought the same thing. The acquisitions part seems to me to be positive news, and my impression of eBay is that it has become large, slow and bloated.

they are chump-change acquisitions in the grand scope of ebay's market cap

no, no one in the bay area lays off unless the street (stock) demands it.

the psychological impact of layoffs is the antithesis of growth, which all bay area companies are trying to project

if they didn't need to layoff, they would just put the excess headcount on cruise control, like google and yahoo do

Not sure I follow the logic entirely. Are we talking business or fashion shows ?

Yes.

yeah, I'll bet we'll see a lot more people going for MBAs or other grad schools this year.

Or CS degrees.

Perhaps not! The people who do that usually do it with borrowed money. There's no money to borrow now.

They just might end up putting on white sheets, driving the mexicans out of town, and then standing around outside home depot.