Top image: eBay’s headquarters on Hamilton Avenue in San José, pictured in 2018. Photo: Coolcaesar / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Two of the South Bay’s best-known consumer tech companies have filed notice of permanent layoffs at their headquarters. eBay reported 229 job cuts at 2025 Hamilton Ave. in San José, and Netflix reported 227 at 121 Albright Way in Los Gatos, according to the California Employment Development Department’s WARN report, which covers notices processed from July 1 through Oct. 21, 2026. The cuts were first reported by the Mercury News.
What the filings show
The eBay entry is unusual in one respect: the notice date, processed date and effective date are all listed as Oct. 21. The Netflix Los Gatos entry lists a notice date of Oct. 16, a processed date of Oct. 19 and an effective date of Sept. 14, a month before the notice. Netflix filed a matching notice for 267 workers at 5808 Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles with the same three dates, on top of an earlier August notice covering 59 Los Angeles employees.
California’s WARN Act generally requires 60 days’ notice before a mass layoff, but employers can satisfy their obligations in other ways, including pay in lieu of notice. The state’s spreadsheet does not say whether either company provided pay or benefits in lieu, and the Chronicle is not suggesting either company violated the law. The state’s summary alone cannot show how either company handled the 60-day requirement; that detail would be in the notices themselves or in the companies’ separation terms. Neither company’s filing, as summarized by the state, gives a reason for the reductions. eBay’s entry is classified under retail trade; Netflix’s under information.
The bigger ledger
Neither filing stands alone. The same state report lists, for the period since July 1:
- PayPal: 251 permanent layoffs at 2211 N. First St., San José, effective Oct. 30.
- Oracle: 279 at 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, and 99 in Santa Clara, effective Nov. 13.
- Visa: 320 at 900 Metro Center Blvd., Foster City, effective Oct. 1.
- ServiceNow: 154 at its Santa Clara campus, effective Sept. 28.
- Synopsys: 128 in Sunnyvale, effective Dec. 16.
- Jabil: 382 workers affected by a temporary closure at 30 Great Oaks Blvd., San José, effective Nov. 23.
By the Chronicle’s count of the state data, Santa Clara County employers filed 32 notices covering 2,736 workers in that window, and San Mateo County employers filed 10 covering 1,412. Statewide, the report lists 21,262 affected workers.
The Mercury News, in a separate review of WARN filings, counted nearly 14,500 Bay Area tech layoffs announced so far in 2026, already more than the 10,170 tech job cuts it counted for all of 2025.
Reading the numbers
Two cautions. WARN counts capture only layoffs large enough to trigger the law at a single site, and they record planned cuts, not net employment; the same companies may be hiring elsewhere. And the numbers here do not describe a collapse. Silicon Valley just logged its second-highest quarter of office leasing on record, much of it driven by AI companies. What the ledger does describe is a reallocation: established platforms trimming headcount while capital and hiring flow toward AI infrastructure.
The long view
For the South Bay, the question is whether the region’s large employers are permanently resizing around automation and AI, or making cyclical cuts they will reverse. Either way, the ledger’s concentration in established companies matters for San José and Los Gatos specifically: headquarters jobs anchor office demand, local spending and municipal tax bases. Watch the next twice-weekly EDD updates, and watch whether the companies cutting in the South Bay are adding roles elsewhere.
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