Over the past year we have diligently followed the bursting of the second tech bubble which in the space of less than one year went from the “running of the bulls” to the “mauling of the unicorns“, mostly in the private markets but also – for those rare few who have made it beyond the IPO stage – in the public arena.

In the last few months, this painful reality finally hit ground zero – Silicon Valley itself, as best described in “The Mood In Silicon Valley Is Like The “Moment After The Titanic Hit An Iceberg.” As the Wall Street Journal summarized it:

Some companies are raising funding by selling shares at lower prices than they had in earlier rounds. Such “down rounds” can hurt a startup’s chances at recruiting and discourage employees who are often paid with stock options…. These changes are eroding the idea that drives Silicon Valley’s economy: Work hard, secure venture capital and get rich. With valuations falling, the other side of the equation is reappearing: Failure is often just around the corner.

In this case failure means much more than just a few billionaires and VCs resetting their bubble-level valuation marks back to reality: it means that for millions of ordinary Americans who jumped on the second tech bubble bandwagon, the hangover from the party of the last few years is just around the corner.

Said otherwise, the mass layoffs have arrived.

As TechCrunch confirms, “a handful of job placement executives confirms what recent headlines about layoffs already imply: The market is softening for numerous sectors of the startup world, as well as at publicly traded tech companies.”

This means that it is not only the energy/shale sector where well-paid workers (according to Credit Suisse estimates as much as 250,000) are getting wholesale pink slips: the even better-paid West Coast tech sector is next.