Nine signs your boss is about to fire you. [BusinessSheet]

"Hearst Corporation... continues to host parties even as it folds magazines like CosmoGirl... It seems excessive." [Page Six]

Life has been good on the Googleplex, even for contractors; the search engine's legendary perks, spread across its luxuriously infantilizing office parks, have been enjoyed by all. Next month, that changes, a tipster tells us: Contractors will have to stick to designated "zones" based on the building they work in. The main object is to cut the cost of offering foods and other perks by preventing contractors from visiting cafés meant for employees, or using gyms and other facilities on the main campus. But the "zones" have another benefit for management, as Google girds for deeper cuts.They make it easier to group contractors away from employees, sparing Googlers from the painful reality of watching people boxing up their desks. Google is rumored to have laid off 500 contract recruiters — sensible, because the company barely added 500 employees in the third quarter — with more contractor cuts to come, as soon as next week. Will regular employees be spared? Unclear.

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Web-video-for-guys startup is "laying off" 11 people, but hiring another 11 with different skills, according to its CEO, Keith Richman. Dude, that's not a layoff — that's a classic nutshot.

In a briefing with journalists, Dell CEO confirmed the completion of his company's 8,500-people layoff. He was not demonstrably saddened, as is normal founder practice when discussing layoffs. But he did point out a recent IDC report showing Dell "outpacing" the rest of the PC industry. If Dell's falling stock price is any indication, the company might be outpacing everyone to the poorhouse. (Photo by eschipul)

Imeem is laying off a quarter of its 80-person staff, PaidContent reports. The music-centered social network has been more adept than many of its rivals at navigating the cutthroat music business. But one of its backers is Sequoia Capital, the ruthless VC firm which has ordered its portfolio companies to slash expenses. Imeem is also seeking to sell itself, with the help of investment bank Montgomery & Co. Imeem may be better than most digital-music startups — but it is still a digital-music startup, faced with fickle consumers, thin margins, and antagonistic partners in the record labels.

♦ Yesterday's sell-off is expected to continue today. [WSJ]
♦ Even Goldman Sachs is cutting. The firm plans to cut 10 percent of its 32,000 employees. [WSJ]
♦ The glory days of hedge funds are over, as you're probably aware. [NYT]
♦ Credit Suisse reported a $1.08 billion loss during the third quarter. [DB]
♦ The inquiry into the financial crisis on Capitol Hill continues. Today's guest piñata will be Alan Greenspan. [NYT]

Food is at the center of Google's corporate culture, a sign of the company's Pollyanna worldview and the outsized financial success which enables this largesse. So why is Google is closing a café? Off The Grid, one of Google's 18 in-house eateries at its headquarters, abruptly shut its doors this week. Employees are being told the cut is "temporary," but workers are removing the café's fixtures, which suggests a permanent closure. What this means: Despite CEO Eric Schmidt's protestations, Google is being hit by the recession. And the blows are harder than the company has admitted to shareholders or employees.Off The Grid's closure is the harbinger of more cuts, a source within Google's kitchens we've nicknamed "Deep Fried" tells us. The building, 2350 Bayshore, is also having its "micro kitchen" snack stations closed. A large number of workers in the building were contractors, Deep Fried says, some of whom are losing their temporary jobs at Google. The closure also leaves a large area of Google's campus without breakfast service. Food is just one area where Google is slashing costs; under recently hired CFO Patrick Pichette, Google has been having a series of meetings about eliminating expenses, and Googlers have been implementing the cuts with the same slapdash speed with which it rolls out new websites. Google executives gave food-service operator Bon Appétit sharp budget cuts this year, which has only worsened the already troubled relationship between the companies. Google eliminated dinner at one café earlier this year. But the closure of Off The Grid was sudden, coming after a meeting between Bon Appétit executives and Derek Rupp, the café's executive chef, Deep Fried writes:

Jason Calacanis is a master storyteller. Like most writers, he needs an editor. Here's a summary remix of Calacanis's secret insider mail, sent a few hours after Mahalo's layoffs were expertly leaked to everyone but me, thanks pal.

Why did Yahoo's Gary Gale Twitter about a Wi-Fi network labeled "Valleywag" at Yahoo's quarterly all-hands meeting? If I worked for the New York Times, I'd give you all some blah-blah-blah about how we don't discuss our reporting methods. But I run a gossip rag, so I'll just play coy. We did gather that Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen was asked about the company's pending layoffs of 10 percent of the workforce.Yahoos at the meeting were told that the job cuts would come after Thanksgiving. And the severance? Jorgensen said the company would "do right by Yahoos" — and referred to the legally mandated notice period required by the WARN Act. Translation: Yahoos will get 60 days' severance, because it's the law. Oh, and there's no point in cancelling the holiday parties, because they've already been paid for. After the all-hands, Gale and other Yahoo employees proceeded to an Oktoberfest party.

Mahalo founder: "Tough times, hard decisions." Zillow founder: "Difficult times, difficult decisions." Seesmic founder: "Tough times. Tough decisions." The only thing easy in these times is what to headline your post about the employees you just laid off. Also, make sure to note that you are sad.

Bulldog aficionado Jason Calacanis recently predicted that a large number of Web 2.0 startups will end up on "life support." Could Mahalo, his so-called "human-powered search engine," be one of them? He has laid off 13 of the humans who power Mahalo, with plans to rehire some of them offshore in the Philippines. It's not clear how many staff members that leaves Mahalo with.Silicon Alley Insider reports that a third of Mahalo's full-time staff was laid off; Calacanis, in a blog post — wait, we thought he stopped blogging — muddles the issue by saying Mahalo has 70 full-time and freelance staff. A former Mahalo insider, however, says the real full-time staff has dropped by roughly half, from 60 this summer to 30 before the layoffs. The Brooklyn-raised CEO is ever the artful dodger.

A new round of layoffs is coming to Time Inc. "in the very near future," sources tell the Post's Keith Kelly. But please don't worry about the top brass, departing magazine staff, because they're doing just fine. They've still got their Caribbean retreats, you'll recall, and millions of dollars with which to buy celebrity baby pictures. And it looks like a surprise contract extension is in store for Ann Moore, the Harvard MBA who saw online revenue grow 76 percent this year, even amid cost cutting. That's probably why she's got enough swagger to gab to the Times of London about the "two-year plan" she keeps right next the contract with 18 months left on it. According to Kelly, she's probably right to feel to secure enough to assume she'll get a renewed mandate:

Remember how magazines targeting the rich were going to be "largely immune to the problems" besetting the economy in general and publishing in particular? Well, that was way back in March, and if the ensuing seven months have taught us anything, it's that every last one of us will end up a hobo or die in the ensuing revolution. What this means in the meantime is that there is no such thing as a safe publishing niche. To wit, shelter magazine Cottages & Gardens, serving the rich from the Hamptons to Connecticut to Palm Beach, is poised to let "a lot of people go," a tipster informs us. Staff this week were reportedly told that money on hand will fund their salaries for just two more weeks, unless a bigger company swoops and acquires the magazine. This should sound very familiar:

Normally I don't screengrab reader mail and publish it. Paul Ogle at Tippit summarized the current zeitgeist so well, though, that he deserves a hit. "How can I save my job?" That's the only question on any Google engineer's mind right now. I'm starting to get why two Stanford grad-school dropouts hired an army of Ph.D. degree holders. Right now, you Googlers are saving your jobs like there's no tomorrow. And in academia, as I learned as an MIT sysadmin, there is no tomorrow. Publish or perish, people. Thank God you have America's CTO to handle the big issues, like which of you gets fired.

As mysterious to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang as the location of his keyboard's shift key is the trick to communicating layoffs. Jerry, you should deliver them the way Steve Jobs unveils the latest Apple products: All at once, and tell the audience they can get them now. Instead, in his latest no-caps memo, Yang informs Yahoo employees that 1,400 of them will lose their jobs, but they won't find out any details for "several weeks." Jerry, you're doing it wrong. Here's Yang's latest botched communication to his staff:

Yahoo's earnings announcement was ghastly in two ways. The bad news: Its revenues were flat and earnings down 64 percent. The worse news: It is only cutting 10 percent of its workforce, or 1,500 employees, which will reduce expenses by $400 million. The cuts are not nearly deep enough. Yahoo is forgoing immediate pain for a prolonged period of uncertainty, as investors continue to abandon the stock and employees expect further layoffs down the road.

Is Yahoo laying off 1,500 people? Or 3,500? It all depends on how you define "layoff." A commenter on Silicon Alley Insider has a theory on Yahoo's layoffs, which the company may finally announce in today's earnings call:

The layoffs are moving up the food chain, from the startups to the larger tech beasts. FuckedStartups writes that Ticketmaster is laying off 35 percent of its 3,000-plus staff, which squares with other reports I've heard. Ticketmaster is besieged with competition from concert promoter LiveNation, and was recently spun off by IAC. If I had to bet, I'd say these cuts have as much to do with removing the layers of cruft which accumulated under years of flitty mismanagement by IAC CEO Barry Diller as they do with the economy.

The layoffs we heard about earlier today at Adweek have been confirmed by the company—sort of. An Adweek story and a statement to PRNewser confirm Nielsen Business Media's, ahem, "Reorganization," which will consolidate the staffs of Adweek, Brandweek, and Mediaweek, while leaving them all as separate brands. Layoffs are taking place, though the company doesn't go into details (we heard around 20, and UPDATE: Folio says 19 total—11 in the Adweek group and 8 from other publications). It's a sign that trade mags are no safer than their consumer-oriented peers in this awful economic climate. And it offers some truly classic examples of fact-free corporate jargon: