This morning I've seen a few tweets come across with links to a TechCrunch article titled, "Tech Layoffs Surge to 300,000." As I scanned down the list of companies, which included the likes of the LA Times (didn't know that was a tech company... anyway...), what I saw was big corporation after big corporation. My first thought was, is this really that surprising? My second thought was, what about the small guys? Large corporation are notorious for having a lot of excess baggage in the form of unproductive employees, bloated processes and too much red tape. The reality is that many of these companies should probably have already been operating at the staff levels they ended up at after job cuts. The corporate buzzword over the past few years has been "lean." Well, nothing like a bit of a recession to lean out your team, and your processes. While it's unfortunate for the employees, hopefully many of these companies will come out of this stronger as they adapt to their current situation. So what about small tech? If my little bubble of reality (web application development) were any indication of the economy at large, there would definitely be no recession. At Squeejee, it seems that almost every week we're in talks with potential clients and if anything that is speeding up rather than slowing down. The story seems to be the same for many small business type people in the IT, web, and creative spaces that I come across. That being said, I suppose there is no really solid means of telling how hard the small tech industry has been hit. After all, a 5 person company closing its doors doesn't exactly make national news headlines. It would definitely be an interesting comparision to try to dig up some numbers comparing small businesses in the Technology sector to these large corporations that are having to layoff huge numbers of employees. I suspect that right now, it might be more advantageous to be small, agile and flexible to really adapt quickly to the changing economic climate. What's the situation at your small business in the Tech industry? Good, bad, otherwise?