OLD AND BUSTED: Can Greeks Become Germans?

The New Hotness? Can Californians Become Germans?! They fire, we hire’ — Germany seizes on Silicon Valley’s woes.

Faced with a tight labour market and a shortage of workers with key software engineering skills, some German companies are looking at thousands of layoffs in Silicon Valley as an opportunity to recruit top talent.

The U.S. West Coast has always been the main destination for ambitious software engineers looking to work in the best-paid, most elite corner of their profession, but the mass redundancies have created a pool of jobseekers that Germany is eager to tap.

“They fire, we hire,” said Rainer Zugehoer, Chief People Officer at Cariad, the software subsidiary of automaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE). “We have several hundred open positions in the U.S., in Europe and in China.”

Spooked by inflation and the prospect of recession, Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Facebook owner Meta (META.O) have announced a combined almost 40,000 job cuts.

Other than the minor language issue, most uber-leftist denizens of Silicon Valley would consider transitioning to Germany to be a lateral move.