HP have just bought down the layoff hammer to approximately 275 of the 500 webOS employees, most of them from engineering (those that make webOS work with actual physical hardware). HP have nearly 350,000 employees, so most of these men and women from the webOS department should find jobs within HP easily.

This is, of course, if HP decide to keep these people within the company. This decision to get rid of 275 webOS-based employees leaves webOS with roughly 225 employees. The decision follows HP's plan to move the webOS group out of the old 1000-employee Palm campus and over to the smaller Cupertino-based campus that HP acquired when they purchased ArcSight in 2010.

HP's official statement on the matter:

As webOS continues the transition from making mobile devices to open source software, it no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before. This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP's commitment to the software over the long term.

 

HP is working to redeploy employees affected by these changes to other roles at the company.