This morning most of us woke up to the disappointing news that social news sitea4s‚ Digg, once a promising destination for Silicon Valley talent, was losing 37% of its staff as well experiencing key executive departures.

While the usual armchair Twitter quarterbacks responded to the what the layoffs mean for the ailing site, another more positive trend was also evidenced' People making it clear that the kind of top tier engineering talent that worked for Digg was welcome at a spectrum of high profile startups and full fledged techcompanies.

As I&'m hearing that the talent pool of experienced engineers in the Bay Area is currently in short supply, this layoff might be a boon for local startups looking to add skilled staff. Some of the companies that have already expressed interest in hiring include Twitter (above), Groupon,a4s‚ GDGT, O&'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, a4s‚ IGN, Styleseat, variousa4s‚ First Round Capital portfolio companies and AT&'T Interactive.

It looks like SimpleGeo founder and former Digg Lead Architect Joe Stump is curating the tweets and offering support and introductions help to the 25 people laid off. If you hear of anyone else who is tweeting about hiring, please link to them in the comments.