The Null Device

This is not the Onion: In the homeless shelters of California, the usual drug addicts, schizophrenics and hard-luck cases are being joined by a new class of derelict: former dot-com employees, whose six-figure, stock-optioned lifestyles had been snatched out from under them by the Dot-Com Bust.

"what makes this unusual is that people in the valley have become appendages of their jobs and their workplace. They've worked up to 110 hours per week and slept on the conference room floor," said Ilene Philipson, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Working Families at the University of California at Berkeley. "People have given up all sorts of things to give to their job, and when there's a layoff there's no other support for them."
There's an only-in-Silicon Valley twist to his story: Sacrosante and three other former high-tech workers who met at the shelter are launching a start-up business that will resell wearable mobile computing systems.

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