A computer engineer with a Silicon Valley start-up has been charged with murder after allegedly gunning down three of his bosses just hours after they sacked him.

Jing Hua Wu, 47, a family man with 25 years of experience in the industry, came back to the office and asked for a meeting to discuss his future after the dismissal. The killing spree took place against a backdrop of redundancies in Silicon Valley.

Mr Wu apparently seemed calm and gave no indication of his intentions until he pulled out a 9mm pistol during the meeting. Police said they knew of no previous history of violence or mental illness in Mr Wu's background.

After firing "multiple gunshots" he quickly fled the building and got into his silver SUV without targeting or threatening any other employees. The victims were declared dead at the scene. A manhunt for Mr Wu ended a day after the shootings at an intersection in his home city of Mountain View.

Mr Wu was a lead product test engineer at SiPort, a four-year-old company based in Santa Clara, west of San Jose, that develops digital radio semiconductors. The victims were Sid Agrawal, 56, SiPort's chief executive officer; Brian Pugh, 47, vice president of operations; and Marilyn Lewis, 67, head of human resources.

Mr Wu was let go on Friday morning. Police said he returned sometime after 3 pm. "He requested a meeting with several company officials," said Chief Stephen Lodge of Santa Clara Police. "It was during this meeting that Jing Wu took out a 9 mm handgun and shot and killed all three officials."

Neighbours in Mr Wu's close-knit neighborhood of eight two-story stucco homes described him as a happily married father of 6-year-old twin boys and another boy under 3.

"Wu is a nice, smart guy who is quiet by nature," Jim Pollart, 47, said, adding that his children regularly played with Mr Wu's kids. He also recalled how joyous Mr Wu and his wife were when their parents made annual visits from China.

"He must not have been acting too strangely for them to accept the meeting," Police Chief Lodge said. He said Wu was the only employee he knew of who was being dismissed at the company. One report said he had been sacked for not being up to the job.

Wu has lived for more than 10 years with his wife and three boys in a two-story, three-bedroom home on Emerson Lane at the end of a cul-de-sac. Neighbours say that Mr Wu often played with his twin 6-year-olds or took them to the community pool nearby.

Eric Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle that he and Mr Wu went on a neighbour's boat once. "He wasn't a big talker, but he was friendly," Mr Johnson said. "Not the kind of guy you'd expect that would be involved in something like this. Geez, I wouldn't even have thought he'd own a gun."

But Mr Johnson said recent layoffs in Silicon Valley show "that there are a lot of people who you wouldn't expect to be out of a job now are."

The economic downturn has hit the tech sector hard in the last few weeks. Orders for both business and consumer tech products have collapsed, and technology companies have begun laying off workers.

The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2000, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly a fifth of its jobs.

The sector is at the mercy of a slump in both corporate and consumer spending caused by the housing decline and the economic crisis on Wall Street. In particular small start-ups with no income stream yet are struggling as venture capitalists drastically cut back on investment.

BestBuy, the leading electronics retailer, declared this week that "rapid, seismic changes in consumer behavior" had fostered the worst conditions in its 42-year history, and its main rival, Circuit City Stores, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Nokia, the world's largest maker of cellphones, predicted last Friday that global sales of handsets would fall in 2009, which would be only the second decline ever.

Dozens of start-ups, like the micro-bloggin messaging service Twitter, have been cutting staff members as they prepare for a slow economy. Sun Microsystems, a leading maker of computers used by financial services companies, announced that it would lay off as many as 6,000 employees, or 18 per cent of its work force.

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