NEW YORK — Google laid off around 300 DoubleClick employees today, one still with the company told me this afternoon. We were standing outside DoubleClick's headquarters at 111 8th Avenue in Chelsea, where I spent the afternoon asking DoubleClick employees how their day went.

Commenter and steadfast Yahoo apologist MarktheMarketWatcher zings Google's skimpy severance package for laid-off DoubleClickers:

We reported Google layoffs at DoubleClick would start yesterday, but they only began today. Why? A DoubleClick employee said that Google pushed the cuts back "because yesterday was April Fools' Day." Ah, make the peons wait a day while Larry and Sergey have their fun. A quaintly botched approximation of mercy, no doubt. Today, our source tells us: "People are getting calls and start crying when they are told that are being let go." Would they have laughed if they'd been told yesterday?

Google layoffs at DoubleClick, the online-advertising tech company based in New York that it just acquired, began a day later than expected. Today, among others, the entire finance team was shown the door. It's a bright, sunny day in New York; a good start for ex-DoubleClickers' four-month vacation. Google's severance package: two months' pay plus another two if they sign a noncompete agreement, a Google source told Vanity Fair. No wonder Google wants them off the market: Yahoo and other online-advertising rivals are actively recruiting DoubleClick veterans. (Photo by stobor)

Dell is closing its Austin, Texas manufacturing plant, once hailed as a miracle of modern manufacturing, and will fire up to 900 employees. The computer maker is looking to save $3 billion over the next three years and views the firings as a "opportunity to drive both productivity and efficiency." Dell announced last year that it wanted to cut 8,800 jobs or 10 percent of its workforce. So far, the company has laid off more than 3,000 workers. Which serves as a reminder: For the 250, April 1 is a big joke; for working stiffs who actually make technology and have to hit their numbers, it's the deadly serious start of the second quarter. (Photo by Michael Kanellos/News.com)

A tipster with two friends at DoubleClick tells us Google will cut DoubleClick's staff by 15 percent, trimming the sales teams that push Dart for Advertisers and Dart for Publishers by 20 percent. Google plans to give those ad-targeting services to its advertisers for free, making money on brokering ads. Most of the rest headed for the door are general staff whose functions overlap with Google's administrative workers.

The Newsweek buyouts have happened and they're more extensive than originally predicted. Let us remember that a buyout is a far better fate than layoff. These fallen writers are in a better place now. A place with The Golden Girls and The Price Is Right. After the jump, a bit more about those who have left Newsweek for a retired journalist heaven.

We've laid out the reasons why DoubleClick employees should ditch Google — Google's Ivy League 'tude, its disdain for DoubleClick's accomplishments, its intentionally disorganized management, and its mediocre compensation. Now we want to know: With layoffs looming as a result of the Google-DoubleClick merger, do DoubleClick employees even want to work for Google? Let us know in our latest Valleywag poll.

We've been hearing that impending layoffs have DoubleClick employees fearing for their jobs after Google finishes its takeover. Why? Working there sucks. Ask any Googler. Below, four reasons why DoubleClickers should welcome their liberation from the Googleplex:

The owners of wilting alt weekly The Village Voice continue to condemn their staff to the torture of a thousand cuts. Last week, the Voice's overlords at cost-cutting conglomerate The New Times laid off dance critic Deborah Jowitt after she'd served forty years at the paper. Now, an insider tells us that writer Chris Thompson-who relocated his family from San Francisco to take the job-has been let go. The problem, our tipster says, is that Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega has most of his hiring decisions dictated to him by his New Times bosses "and then he sulks because he doesn't really like them, and then decides they aren't 'working out.'" More Voice woes after the jump.

"That's life," commenter danmiller3 wrote after we told you about how CNET laid off an employee recovering from cancer. Turns out he was more right than he knew. A new CNET tipster tells that one of his laid-off colleagues lost his job just two months after his wife gave birth. "Fuck Neil Ashe," our source says. He says CNET employees are "all half hoping" private equity firm Jana Partners — which already has a 14.9 percent stake in the company — "takes over and fixes the platform and other underlying legacy issues from when CNET was a cable syndicator instead of trying to create tons of new fledgling brands."

CNET CEO Neil Ashe sent this all-hands memo to explain to his charges the changes that CNET is making to be successful. The memo looks like it came straight out of a Dilbert strip. Ashe says CNET must "embrace change" and "drive greater efficiencies in the business." In addition, a management task force has evaluated CNET's "organization and resource alignment." How about writing a memo in actual English? That seems easier — and a better way to spend everyone's time. At least Jerry Yang's memos had that funny e.e. cummings-esque no-capital-letters charm going for them. Ashe's anodyne euphemisms? They make me glad I don't work at CNET — or any other huge conglomerate for that matter.

Ever since Google CEO Eric Schmidt promised "reductions in headcount" as part of the Google-DoubleClick merger, there's been much tension at the New York-based online ad network. Who gets to stay and pig out on all the new Googley perks? Who will have to hit the streets to face a slowing job market? The answers arrive April 1. It's not an April Fools' joke.

A freshly laid-off CNETter tells us that management's extension of benefits to May 31 hasn't allayed the employee's health concerns. Why? Oh, just cancer.

Newly former CNET employee Robert Balousek reports that he was one of 120 U.S. employees laid off by CNET, the online tech publisher. On Wall Street, the company is trying to fend off a takeover attempt by hedge fund Jana Partners. On the Web, the company is trying to stay vaguely relevant as a swarm of tech blogs silence whatever buzz it once had. The good news: CNET TV personality Natali Del Conte is still employed, which means there's some modicum of sense left at headquarters. Witnesses to the carnage, drop us a line. (Photo by Terry Chay)

Tribune CEO Sam Zell's plan to cut 400 to 500 jobs from his newspaper fiefdom—including 150 positions at the Los Angeles Times alone—could be good news for some eager younglings. Rumors are mounting that LAT publisher David Hiller is hot to replace all those costly veteran reporters with J-School kids just hungry and indebted enough to work for scraps. If you've heard anything, kindly hit the tips button. [najp.org]

Oh, look, Valleywag's tipsters came through — 125 laid off at eBay worldwide. [CNNMoney]

Chipmaker AMD has laid off 5 percent of its workforce, reports the Inquirer. The cuts came across all divisions as AMD prepares to report due to lower-than-expected numbers for the quarter. What? Free booze for trade journos didn't do the trick? (Photo by My Hobo Soul)

In the last 24 hours, we've heard that eBay has laid off 40 members from its bloated middle-management ranks and that its PayPal subsidiary has let its entire branding department go. Has Wall Street already gotten word of these cutbacks? We all know how much the market loves "fat trimming," and EBAY is up nearly two points so far today. (Photo by AP/Tony Avelar)

Yahoo will move its European headquarters from London to Rolle, Switzerland. HR emailed 70 top managers, many of them pictured here, to tell them they have 30 days to relocate or lose their job, according to the Financial Times. The move is supposed to ease Yahoo's tax bill. PaidContent's Rafat Ali thinks the hassle of the move is meant to drive Yahoo European head Toby Coppel out of the company. (Photo by sh1mmer)