An Industry Standard article, "Layoffs, Schmayoffs," calls bullshit on the Internet economy collapse hype of late. Apparently, prompting a bunch of doom and gloom stories lately, was a report that cited 4,805 Internet company layoffs in September. The unreported part was that the company that did the survey was an outplacement firm: "...really, it's in the business of layoffs. The company does resumes and interview training for the newly jobless. It's been doing a layoff survey since 1993, issuing the results in press releases for media attention." So, they're biased. Of course, The Industry Standard is in the business of Internet economy hype, so they are too. But they're still convincing: "[If the number of people working in the Internet economy capped in 1998:] The 'alarming' layoffs reported by Challenger, et al., would represent just 0.7 percent of the Internet labor pool. If there's cause for alarm, this isn't it. 'The significance of these layoffs is minuscule,' says Mat Johnson, market strategist for the San Francisco-based investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners. 'There is massive job churn in this economy, and people are getting rehired faster than they're getting laid off.'" So I guess it doesn't all mean that it's easier to hire good people now? Damn. (I'm biased, too.)