Silicon valediction? Our road trip to tech industry hotspots as the sector cools

But does this ballooning crisis really mean the end of Silicon Valley as we know it? As someone who has been covering tech for nearly a decade and lived in the Bay Area for the past four years, I wanted to see for myself. And so there I was, bumper to bumper, making my way from my apartment in East Oakland to downtown San Francisco.

I hopped in my car and headed to the South Bay, the birthplace of tech giants like Apple, HP, Adobe, Paypal and Google, to see if the prospects were less bleak.

I ordered a matcha latte and sat amid more than a dozen patrons deeply engrossed in their laptops, many discussing the tech space with their lunch companions. In the heyday of Silicon Valley it was nearly impossible to snag a table here.

When I asked around where to grab a drink, Steins Beer Garden & Restaurant was a popular answer. Indeed, the recently laid-off Googler I spoke to at Coupa Cafe told me that is where he and his colleagues had gone to commiserate after job cuts. I ordered a drink and sat outside, where work teams were seemingly meeting for company happy hours. A waitress told me that business typically dips in the winter, but had been relatively stable despite layoffs, especially with the added business of newer tech firms like the online therapy company BetterHelp opening down the street in recent years. Still, she said fewer companies had been renting out the space for corporate events and that the bar has been advertising such deals more recently to boost business.