Retail sector is not going to hAve a strong 2017. 2016 ended soft and almost every retailer is losing ground to ecommerce. That being said, it does seem odd they would cut senior ecommerce folks in that climate.

Seems like around 2010 they had a big dev layoff in Bentonville, and then were hiring soon after, which I remember as being quite pecluliar.

Is this layoff a leading indicator of the dev job market bubble bursting?

I think it's more likely an indication that the folks in Bentonville figured out that their expensive SV shop spent a lot of time and money doing things (like, oh, writing their own app server[1]) that weren't critical to improving sales on Wal-Mart's website.

[1] http://electrode.io

I'm wondering if that's a symptom of too many people and therefore more free time for open source projects like electrode. If that's the case, I wonder if hiring decision makers are held accountable for over-hiring?