Not so long ago at an employee all-hands Jen Hsun was claiming "NVIDIA is immune to the economy."

Yeah. Right. And even God himself could not sink the Titanic. 

Remind me, isn't a layoff a sign that a company is being reactive to to the economy?

How Many Times Has Jens Stated: Its' Executions that Count. Seems it drifted bit onto Human Side.

One Thing, New Execution takes Years to Complete, while upgrade to existing design by revision takes mere weeks.

So Jens, Start Executing to get back into Race.
TS Drashek

Late last year Nvidia was on a hiring binge. I got the impression from some employees that it was a bit much. Looks like they overdid it. I wonder how many new-hires lasted?

I thought it was a rival console - rather than 'people out of the window'

Stealth is when your true intentions cannot be detected and it is usually done when the confusion facade reigns as calm much like a duck in the water. So what better time to get rid of some previously useful hirelings to top-up the petty cash coffers. You know, the extra yacht, “entertainment” budget and more. Materialism or objective matter, whether it is living or otherwise, is merely Innocence-in-progress and as such, are merely reflectors. That is what innocence is. It reflects your true intentions for a rock, say, has no “for” nor “against”. How humans handle reflections/innocence is not a matter of gain or loss to the matter under consideration but whether you are handling it with love/reality or whether your are injecting your “genetics” otherwise known as aggression/venom/greed/”messianic radiance” or depression/sympathies/worship-capacity/fear and much, much more. 

As such, a work of art has the love of the painter but that love cannot be bought, accumulated, financially-appreciated and similar nonsense for these accumulations merely reflect one’s greed/anger-cum-fear/guilt and though it is ultimately illusory for all will have to part with their accumulations, what the accumulator has become is the reality. And it has to be paid-for – if only humans can make the connection, [even at the health level, say], not through their minds of fantasy and imaginations, but through their reality which is just another word for truth. Behind all the seemingly airy-fairy, lovey-dovey, greeny, “religious”, moralistic descriptions lies Love which is Reality per se and Love, in reality, is not those airy-fairy descriptions. Love has no “for” nor “against” because Love not only truly conquers all, it is the real potentional-cum-power behind all the universes combined and because it has no “for-or-against”/instability, Love is beyond the minds. 

One cannot “fall in/out-of love” for love cannot be owned/is not about possessions. It can only be reflected and therefore is merely your reflection and the way objectivity elicits love is through whatever that was reflected into it. So be thankful about food and not jam it down the gut, respect all the bounties provided by The Sun and not treat it as possessions and especially, treat money/currency as a tool/purveyor-of-love and not as a weapon/destroyer-of-love. Still can’t-see-it/believe-it? Look at the financial nonsense. When there is no Love, it always ends with saviours and clever-dickies mounting the rostum to take charge-of/control chaos and when control has no abandonments to balance it, reality will be further from reach. More of these seemingly unconnected “stirrings” will follow because only a calamity will awaken an addict, but even then, which is why behind the disasters is Love, if only we will allow Her access. Because all mental/man-made disturbances are zero-sum games/”free-for-alls”, has anyone questioned who got away with the loot this time round? Real Armageddons are not man-made. They are merely the occassional “Spring Clean” after a “good” party.

Presumably the unlucky people will be the motherboard chipset teams, which isn't surprising given how buggy their chipsets have been. Plus I'm sure nVidia need to save some cash to pay for all the faulty Geforce cards that are going to die soon.

Finally..without bashing nvidia to nothingness

Nvidia would be fine laying off all of their chipset division as they aren't going to produce motherboard components/chipsets anymore. I don't imagine they'll fire any of the staff with the expertise to design future graphics processing units. So overall this is a perfectly justifiable step in Nvidia's business management plan.

I am guessing that I should ignore the email I got from an inhouse recruiter at NVDA Cali earlier this week?

Hmmm... Why laying off? Profits not rolling in? That 200 mill charge for melting notebook chips costing you? Taking a beating from AMD/ATI in all pricing sectors so you have to discount your vid cards, thereby losing more money? Ooops!!! Glad I didn't buy that NV 8800GT that was on sale....