Welcome to ex-HPville: Population 53,100.

These days, tech companies keep chiseling away at their work forces. The latest layoffs are coming from Intel, which recently announced it is axing 10,500 jobs.

But over the past 6 1/2 years, HP - the company once renowned for providing lifelong employment - has laid off more workers worldwide than any other Silicon Valley company. In the process, HP has created a virtual community that illuminates the social upheaval the unemployed wrestle with as companies race to reinvent themselves in the global economy.

HP made another kind of news last week when several agencies announced they were investigating the company after it revealed that it hired contractors who impersonated HP directors, journalists and employees in order to get phone companies to turn over detailed logs of their home phone calls, a possibly illegal ruse known as pretexting. The chairwoman of the HP board, who ordered the pretexting to find out who was leaking information to the media, stepped down. But it is the company's workplace image that has taken a bigger beating in recent years.

Like many cities, ex-HPville is diverse. It's filled with 60-year-old grandparents as well as single thirty-somethings. The place has attracted an administrative assistant from Mountain View, Calif., a computer supplies salesman from Paris and an information technology manager from Dublin, Ireland.

United by fate: Yet uniting these former colleagues, who were flung together by ill fate, is their desire to focus on the future - something more difficult than many expect because their identities are so wrapped up in their HP pasts.

''HP was the company to work for in the valley,'' said Patti Wilson, a high-tech career counselor who over the past 20 years noticed her laid-off HP clients had more trouble than most giving up their dreams of getting rehired at the company that had just given them the boot.

''No one wanted to let go,'' Wilson said.

By Oct. 31, HP's latest round of reductions will have pushed 15,300 of the 151,000-person work force out the door. That will bring the legendary computer and printer maker's total layoffs to 53,100 since 2000, when then-chief executive Carly Fiorina launched the first involuntary job cuts. This eighth round, by CEO Mark Hurd, isn't rattling employees' nerves as much because downsizing has become a drill in the company's quest to boost profits.

Layoffs hadn't always been the solution.

Not like the old days: In 1970, HP co-founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard resisted the temptation to weather the nation's temporary economic downturn by slashing 10 percent of their work force. Instead, they cut each U.S. employee's work schedule - and, as a result, pay - by 10 percent. Packard wrote in his book The HP Way that this illustrated their management principle of ''sharing.''

Times have changed. Even Packard acknowledged HP, which had grown from a garage start-up to the valley company with the largest global work force, would need to reduce staff as downsizing swept through corporate America. But the spirit of sharing continues to help HP employees who face layoffs.

HP workers who are tapped to leave the company soon discover the address for a Web site - spread by word of mouth and caring colleagues - where ex-HPers pour out their tips on how to exit with as little pain - and as much money - as possible. This welcome kit to ex-HPville, found at http://users.frii.com/ajs/WFR info.htm, sprung up in 2002 after HP sent engineer Alan Silverstein on an ''emotional roller coaster ride'' to the unemployment office.

This ''HP Work Force Restructuring Collective Knowledge'' site receives at least 10,000 hits a year. The frequently updated site has grown from two pages when printed out to its current length of 30 pages as more than 50 ex-HPers chimed in on everything from cashing out HP incentive payments to copying performance evaluations before being locked out of the computer network.

Former HP IT business analyst Rebecca Kun, of Portland, Ore., put several of those pointers to use when she was laid off in July 2005.

''I thought that was classic HP, being helpful,'' said Kun, 35. ''That's the old HP Way.''

While ex-HPville seems like a pleasant place, hardly any of its ''inhabitants'' chose to move there. Even the ones who accepted severance-laced early retirement offers, which were part of the corporate downsizing plans, adamantly say they would have kept working at HP if they could.

Jean Tully joined HP in 1972 as a secretary in Loveland, Colo., and over the next 30 years worked her way up to be an organizational development manager in Cupertino, Calif. In 2002, on her 52nd birthday, Tully turned in her HP employee badge. She took a voluntary buyout in part because she doubted there would be a place for her in the new HP, which had just completed the Compaq merger.

Banding together: Some laid-off HPers plod on with life by banding together.

Ex-HPers in Idaho established a Yahoo Group called the ''BoiseJobClub'' as an online support network for local HP employees laid off in 2001. The next year, their unlucky colleagues in Roseville, Calif., started a similar listserv offering job leads. And 259 pink-slipped HP employees have joined the ''Post HP-Compaq Merger Meeting Lounge,'' a Web site where the unemployed post their résumés.

They're focusing on their futures. But those, quite often, circle back to their HP pasts.

The centripetal force pulling career paths could be felt at weekly breakfast meetings where ex-HPers supported each other's job hunt.

A dozen strangers who met through HP's outplacement services and bonded over their severance checks gathered at 10 a.m. on Fridays this year at an International House of Pancakes in Vancouver, Wash. Many of the ex-HPers gravitated to their familiar favorites, then gave two-minute updates on their job applications and interviews.

More often than not, the conversation veered toward what opportunities existed back at HP.

''People just couldn't not be HP,'' said Art Davis, a 55-year-old architect laid off from HP in February.

Davis and Kun were among the few attendees intent on moving beyond HP. Kun, who organized the breakfast meetings, suggested the group critique each other's résumés. The feedback hinted at why many of them couldn't - or perhaps wouldn't - embark on a new path.

''Everyone has the HP perspective of what makes a good résumé, and the reality is we're not in HP anymore,'' said Kun, who is eyeing start-up jobs that build upon her five years at HP. ''I appreciate their input, but, unfortunately, outside of HP it doesn't always apply.''