King County and Zillow join the group of folks laying off workers in the Seattle area this week. Zillow announced last night, King County finished the process on Friday. King County laid off some 255 workers in total, while Zillow laid off about 25% of its work force.

This adds to TripHub (5), Entellium (7) which also has other problems, Imperium Renewables (2), and Gallery Player that did an undisclosed number of layoffs. The Seattle Layoff Tracker has not been updated for September or October yet. Needless to say this blood letting is probably just getting started, there are over 200 startups in the Seattle area, and many are following the VC advice to scale back now and preserve cash.

Zillow’s CEO posted on his blog that

The unprecedented economic events that are playing out on a global stage began in our own industry and have made a prolonged recession likely, in our judgment. We are a young company that is not yet making a profit. Despite having sizeable cash reserves, we deemed the responsible course was to meaningfully reduce expenses, so that Zillow emerges from the other side of the recession in a very strong position, even if the recession lasts many years. Source: ZillowBlog

Techcrunch has additional commentary here. But also raises another near disturbing viewpoint into the process, that some CEO’s of companies are using this as an opportunity to keep the strong players, ones who will work like slaves with no guarantee of payoff, while letting “underperformers” go, in other words, cutting out the dead wood.

I am a strong proponent of work life balance, and yes, there are always going to be people in an organization that will not pull their own weight. And yes, there are always those people who will never get it. You join into a startup because you like/love the environment and understand the commitment to the company you are making. If you work for some other company, even government they get upset with you if you work more than 40 hours a week. Others especially in the startup community need you to work the hours the job requires to get it done. If that means a long string of 90 hour work weeks, and the company makes it, suddenly becoming a millionaire will help offset the hours lost. We all understand this game, but not everyone works by the rules.

If the layoffs are not really layoff’s and people are using this to cut “dead wood” or those that are not doing what they need to do to get the work done, that is certainly an option. In the touchy feely management, style though one would have hoped that those cut would have had an opportunity to be told that there are issues, and to increase or make their work better. The interesting parts is that those being laid off, and are now looking for a job, if they say they came from Zillow, or anywhere else, here are the strikes against them.

Your startup company let you go that must mean you are a slacker.

Your startup company let you go, that means you have a negative check mark against you before you even walk in the door (after all we read this in the technical blogging world).

With that being said, the black mark against those workers being let go is going to reflect the changing atmosphere, where being let go is going to equate to being a slacker, making employment harder down the road. Interesting world we live in, but if I see a resume from someone who was let go, that is going to be the first question I am going to ask, “why would they let you go if you were performing to expectations?”.

Tags: layoff, seattle, tracker, questions, ceo, slacker, underperform, hiring, time, money, business, news