That website is filled with nutcases. I question even if most of the posts are from real employees or ex-employees. Just read some of the posts. Some of the posts are so far out there, it’s funny. I would take everything with a grain of salt.

What is clear is that there appears to be a lot of people with an ax to grind with Qualcomm and their employees. I don’t know why.

From some of colleagues there, there hasn’t been a reduction in some departments yet, so it is highly unlikely someone knows the bodycoint distribution, unless that person works in HR and is leaking information.

Here’s the site:

https://www.thelayoff.com/qualcomm

More news attention to this:

http://www.10news.com/news/major-qualcomm-layoffs-in-san-diego-this-week

Not sure how reliable their info is, but they are saying:

“There was no word on exactly how many employees would be laid off in San Diego, although the number was expected to be in the thousands.”

If it is true thousands laid off in San Diego, then I would think that’s enough to impact housing market.

You can probably add some more to that in January once avago completes the acquisition of Broadcom. Great for shareholders. Bad for employees.

Even if 20-30% of these employees actually left San Diego, one can assume the ownership ratio is somewhat higher than the general population but at most a few hundred homes would come on the market and these wouldn’t be distressed sales. So best case for buyers, there may be a little more inventory.

As inventory is so low, one can only think this would be a small step to normalization but far from the basis for any larger correction.

Qualcomm has been around so long that the vast majority of employees could have bought years ago (especially in the 2008-2012 low price period). A former manager of mine was Managing Director for Qualcomm Europe. He made so much money on stock options, that he could easily retire, it was several million dollars for one person.

For more recent employees, you may have a point but even then, the effect will be minimal.

More Chinese buyers will buy more homes in one year than Qualcomm employees will sell. I was driving by an investment property in 4S ranch and see a group of them doing Tai Chi in the morning. The group keeps getting larger month by month.

With low interest rates, low supply, constant immigration, low energy prices, and lack of new construction, prices will be flat in the worst case, probably continue up at the 2-5%/year range for the mid term. If several years from now, the shale boom is over and we get some energy price inflation, then perhaps rates rise which will put a damper on things. In the mean time, Telsa, GM, Nissan are brining out more EVs which should cap energy cost inflation.

Wage inflation will stay capped by global competition.

So even if we have rent inflation in California, the rest of the country won’t be so bad because they will build more elsewhere like in Texas.

So big picture, some layoffs at one company won’t do much.

Some of those group Tai Chi players in 4S Ranch are actually parents of Qualcomm engineers.