Looking At Pretty Graphics Of Dot Com Demographics

chris_robison writes "A talented guy wrote a great example of the quality of talent that is going to waste in these economic "hard times". An unemployed friend of mine put together a kickass tool which lets you query a database of craigslist statistics and generate graphs comparing various things such as job postings and apartments for rent. Although the stats are geared toward San Francisco and the Bay Area, it does make for some interesting reading, even if you aren't from around there. Here's his explaination of what he did (included below)" "hey kids.

I'm unemployed and bored.

With all the talk about dotcom booms and people moving away and all these really general statements people are making; i was curious as to what's really going on now, what went on four years ago and what effect did the boom really have on this community.

So.. i wrote a script that went through the craigslist archive on egroups and tallied the number of postings each day for each category then i stuffed it in a database and made a grapher tool.

It's kinda neat cos you can basically see some somwhat hard data on what the san francisco bay area has been doing over the past four years. you can graph job postings from various industries against things like apartments for rent or housing wanted postings, also for sale postings and resumes.

Some of the interesting things I found is that the number of housing wanted postings seems to be slightly down recently but pretty much unaffected by the drop in jobs. perhaps people are always in a state of wanting to move to a city.

One thing to bear in mind, this data isn't one hundred percent accurate for a few reasons... people do repost their information multiple times in a given month, sometimes people post a number of avaliable apartments in a single posting and craigslist has become significantly more popular over the years in question. however, I do still think that it makes for a decent general indicator of trends in our community. (I'm considering doing some kind of normalizing based on the total volume of posts- I need to think about it some more)

(Unfortunately, personal listings aren't archived. I guess that's a good thing... but I guess it also would have been cool to graph activity on the personals categories against some of the categories that reflect the general state of the economy. (maybe when people aren't tied up in career they start to think about more important things, or maybe not...) )

Either way, the data is there, you can look at it for different time periods and categories. draw your own conclusions and have fun!

The url is here:

http://www.signal11.com/charts/chart-o-m atic.cgi

take it easy..

--adam "

Comments

Not just silicon valley

[jchristopher]

Not just Silicon Valley is being affected by the job crunch - there are a lot of GOOD people out of work in the Los Angeles area too. Not FrontPage monkeys either, real designers and coders.

Re:Not just silicon valley

[sinster]

The job crunch must be pretty close to global. I'm sure there are isolated areas with employment spurts, but in average, everyone is having trouble.

I make this claim based only on a report in the Wall Street Journal on Friday (7 Sept 2001) morning that claimed that almost every stock market in the world closed down at least 1%, and that if the trend continues through the next quarter, that this would "meet the classic definition of a recession". And not just a recession, but a global recession. Of course, the value of this claim is proportional to how much you trust the WSJ to accurately report financial news and how much you believe that the stock markets influence employment rates.

Sorry, I don't have a link: I get my WSJ fix through my palm pilot with AvantGo.

Re:Not just silicon valley

[NumberSyx]

The Austin TX economy is heavily tied to tech as well, I advise anyone looking for work there to move back home or to settle for Taco Bell until things get better, and if you are thinking of moving to Austin, don't waste your time.

Nice one, but some oddities.

[Joel Rowbottom]

This is quite a nice tool which could be used as an example to create "live" management statistics for various applications - certainly doing live plotting of figures against each other. I know I'll try a few new things now I've seen the advantage of using checkboxes ;)

Now, enough praise... ;)

There seems to be some data missing - most notably the "people" data, which would have been interesting to plot the migration of people to and from the area as opposed to housing availability, jobs availability, etc. The other thing is that the server sometimes seems to return an error for some reason or another, although this may be due to the /. effect - I can't imagine the live plotting of data will have a positive effect on the resources ;)

But other than that, a good attempt, and certainly some good ideas there.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people have been laid off - a few of them are talented hackers. But really, the vast majority of dotcom casualties were overpaid frontpage monkeys who will never get a real job outside of bagging groceries or serving fries.

Re:Yeah

[rchatterjee]

Last month 118,000+ people lost their jobs. Compainies like HP, Lucent, and JDSU laid off thosands each. How many frontpage monkeys could any of these have? maybe 100 - 200 tops? What do you think all the other layoffs were? I agree most dotcom refugees are frontpage monkeys but right now a lot of the unemployed in the tech sector aren't from dotcoms.

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

But you may have to wait quite a long while for the next bull market. The last real bear market back in the late 60s-70s took over 10 years to finally play out. What if you were 60 yrs old when the '70s started? Can you survive a 10 year long bear market? What about a 20 or 30 year bear?

More importantly, the 60s was a boom time if you were an aerospace engineer, but it all fell slowly apart during the 70s. The world changes and what it wants out of people changes as well. We never have had the same demand for AEs since. But we have had a huge demand for CS people.

Who knows what the Next Big Thing will be, but I doubt that it will be in the computer industry. The world will go from CS to something else. I wish I knew what, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? Don't know what that old world is going to do next.

In the end, you have to look at what the world wants, and what you have to offer it, and try to do something that will make you both happy. Otherwise, it's all been a waste of time.

jobs - housing.

[garcia]

just b/c you lost your job does not mean that you are quite ready to pick up and leave immediately. Most people are going to try and find a job in the general vicinity *first*, then if they cannot find anything a relocation would be necessary. I would assume that is why there is little change in that department.

Re:jobs - housing.

[Tide]

Maybe elsewhere in the country that would be a fine philosophy, but in the bay area where your paying $1400 a month for a studio, its not that easy. Ive had several friends that were laid off just immediately leave. Just like rats, we all know that the ship is sinking. Just my 2 cents. :)

NYC is bad too

[xtremex]

The guys who are MCSEs and FrontPage Monkeys will be out of work for a LONG time. It seems the trend here in NYC is towards the UNIX/Linux world (seriously).
Since there are over 300,000 MCSEs here, and the companies that want them are disappearing, they need a new skill set.
There was always a minority of *NIX people, and THEY are the ones who can still be picky about the pay/job they want.
Since the financial industry is a UNIX world, AIX and HP/UX guys are in HIGH demand.
At the job I got a month ago, they were looking for a good UNIX admin for 10 months before they hired me! That's why their infrastructure in in such a state of disarray.
They hired me on the spot and wanted me to start same day. I am not even the best UNIX admin out there. (I still can't get the UNIX printing system :))

The market is flooded with Java guys from India who will work for less (Nothing against the East Indians..I'm just stating fact)
I now lead a department. Out of 100 in the department, 97 are from India/Pakistan.
They had NO trouble finding a job.
They all have UNIX skills, DB2 or Oracle and they all have Siebel skills.

Maybe it's just jealosy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's probably just jealosy, but the one thing that really got me about the whole dot-com thing, and the people who identified themselves with it, was the constant repetition of the article of faith that dotcommers were exceptionally talented, smart, or worthy of praise. What about chemical engineers? Ingenious construction workers? (God forbid) Politicians? Accountants? And as for the revelattion that talent goes to waste when the invisible hand gets moody, well, welcome to the real world. I would bet all that I own that there are hundreds if not thousands of farmers in any given state who could out-think the best of the dot-commers; that there are people in your city right now on welfare who are smarter, more inventive, and wittier than you. And me, it goes without saying.
Like I said, this is just jealously, bitterness.. but a social group which lacks the basics of humbleness, and toots its own horn shamelessly, becomes a prick in the side of this lowly helpdesk worker.

oh, hell. I'm posting anonymously.

Re:Maybe it's just jealosy

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can be talented at their job, their is no doubt about that. And I'd agree that dot-commers were probably paid more than people in other industries of the same talent level.

But, as much as it's PC to say that the lowliest of the low is (Surprise!) smarter than everyone who thinks they're smart because of their college education, I'd have to differ. Surely, there are some very talented agricultural engineers and biologists who create GE crops. But I don't take it this is what you mean by "farmer". If you think the average construction worker, or welfare recipient, or farmer, has deep reserves of intelligence that they are just not willing to show to people on their high horses, you should try hanging out with some of these people.

I've met many such people in my life. One thing is clear. Most of them would've taken dot-com jobs if they could have. But they lacked the skill set, and they lacked the drive to obtain the skill set.

The reason why people thought the dot-commers were so smart is because, as much as it seems counterintuitive today, many of them were in fact smart. They were not smart because of what they did. Once you learn http protocols and the principles of servers and templates, etc, it's not that difficult. They were smart because they picked up these things faster than anyone else.

To be the first to move on to the moderately complex world of internet programming, that is why they stood out. It is the same reason that we John Carmack, who always pushes the envelope, and that we don't worship John Romero, who spent three years trying to play catch-up and finally releasing a shitty game.

I'll also admit that many of these people were egomaniacs. But many of them were not. You can't lump all of these people together.

Dot-commerce gave us much great technology, this is good. The internet is not going away, but the adoption rate of this technology fell sorely behind the amount of technology that was being produced. It will be a shame that the technology created by many of these companies will simply be re-done in the future when sufficient demand actually exists for it.

Another good thing is that most of the people left aren't money chasers. What sickened me the most about the dot-commers was the fact that many of them were only there to get rich. Most of these people have since been disenfranchized, their high and mighty (and lucrative!) position is now no longer what it used to be.

So now we are left with people who do this because it is what they love to do. That is why I program, and why I continue to take an interest in internet technology.

Re:Maybe it's just jealosy

[schussat]

But, as much as it's PC to say that the lowliest of the low is (Surprise!) smarter than everyone who thinks they're smart because of their college education, I'd have to differ. Surely, there are some very talented agricultural engineers and biologists who create GE crops. But I don't take it this is what you mean by "farmer". If you think the average construction worker, or welfare recipient, or farmer, has deep reserves of intelligence that they are just not willing to show to people on their high horses, you should try hanging out with some of these people.

construction worker = welfare recipient = farmer?

Wow, that's remarkably myopic and insensitive.

You can't lump all of these people together.

You don't say? So, you're saying that on one hand, they're all really smart, but on the other hand, they're not really that smart -- they just happened to be in the right place at the right time (and have grown up with measurably greater access to the trappings of technology than the "average" welfare recipient). I'm always blown away by the failure to recognize that most people have neither the economic connections nor opportunities to obtain high-paying or high-prestige jobs -- to say at the same time that people both lack the "skill set" and the "drive" is to doubly condemn them to marginality. It turns out that skill set has very little to do with "drive" and very much to do with class. Farmers and construction workers lack neither skills nor drive; can you frame a house? Do you know what working on a farm is like? I think the dot-com revolution is much more egotistical than you're willing to admit.

-schussat

Re:Maybe it's just jealosy

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, you don't know what you are talking about. I grew up poor, single child of a single parent working at McDonald's. I became technically proficient because I wanted to be, not because of my "class". I took advantage of the opportunities presented in school. These are opportunities that *everyone* has, but most people feel too "cool" to pursue.

Also, my grandfather was a farmer, so I know what farming is like. He also happens to be an engineer, and a fairly good one. After retiring he returned to the farm. Farm life does not have much opportunity for intellectual stimulation, I'm sorry, but it just doesn't.

And no, it is not the case that farming == construction worker == welfare recipient. In fact, I was arguing against the original poster who seemed to assume that one's intelligence is inversely related to their "social status". And I'm arguing that certain positions do not have as much intellectual stimulation as others. There are certainly exceptions, I'm sure there's at least one or two people on welfare with 300 IQs, but it is rare.

I also had a step father who was a construction worker. Not a nice fellow, ended up in jail many times and beat my mother. Not all construction workers are so bad, but hanging out them makes you realize that it is much different from hanging out with technology workers.

And I've known people on welfare, and many of them lack the drive to continue. It is sad, and I have sympathy for them. But many of them are where they are because of bad decisions they have made, not because of their previous socio-economic status.

I talk from experience. You seem to have no experience of these situations. I myself am liberal, but I do not romanticize the menial worker, because I know there is nothing romantic about their position. Everyone should be respected as a human being, but we should also recognize that different people excel at different things. I'm sorry if this truth disturbs you, but the mere psychological pain of the inevitable conclusion does not render it false.

Not all dot-commers are capable.

[standards]

I don't feel sad for every one of the dot-com unemployed. Many of them were dreamers, who never lived in the real world.

There are/were thousands of silly dot-coms, with stupid business plans and cobbled-together technology. Many of these shops were not part of any "talent pool".

I remember this one guy who I worked with. Marc was a nice guy. Marc thought of himself as a strong manager who was helping to fuel the dot-com revolution.

But the fact is that Marc didn't have a clue about management OR technology - he was just caught up in a ball of momentum. Marc was in a high-profile position in a very high profile organization. But that fact alone didn't make Marc a capable guy.

Marc left us for the dot coms of Atlanta. The last I heard, Marc was still looking for a job. Not because of the economy, but because he didn't have any skills.

Re:Not all dot-commers are capable.

[garcia]

most of the people were caught up in a seemingly endless supply of capital.. There was so much out there and it just seemed like there were too few people to fill all the spots.

It was almost as if people found the pot of gold a the end of the rainbow.. Problem was that the sun disappeared behind the clouds and only the miserable rain was left. :(

I do feel bad for those that were employed. Just b/c they didn't have the skills necessary does NOT mean that they were the ones at fault. It was those that were sinking in millions to get a company off the ground knowing that it was near worthless.

Re:Not all dot-commers are capable.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working for a place that's growing well and is in a hiring mode. I'm tired of hearing from job candidates who are:

1. looking for a top management position
2. looking to make $250,000+ per year
3. looking for my job, not the job offered.

So many of these people just don't understand that their experience at the former employers weren't in line with what we're looking for. I'd rather take the old COBOL program and convert him, than take a dot-commer. The old COBOL programmer will be willing to learn, and will have an understanding of project plans and production quality. The dot-commer? Some do, many do not.

Re:Not all dot-commers are capable.

[garcia]

many people are desperate for jobs and these companies were promising great salaries, nice relocation spots to live, and promising growth. As a student about to graduate I have been searching endlessly for a decent job to pay my way through life after I am finished. Remember that these people were doing the same exact thing. It is not their fault that they were caught up in the job-boom. Please do not take it out on them, they were/are just as desperate as the rest of us...

Thank your lucky stars!

Re:Not all dot-commers are capable.

[thanq]

many people are desperate for jobs and these companies were promising great salaries, nice relocation spots to live, and promising growth.

I agree with that statement, but isn't that one of the basic human instincts? Hoarding, scrounging, going out there to get more stuff and stash it, repeat. One could say that the whole length of the "dot-com era" or just the huge IT boom we experienced was based on human greed and human gullibility.

Of course, the reasons for wanting more money are ranging from "just to feed the family", through "to pay off my loans", to get a nice car, a nice house.. but soon afterwards the line is deteriorating and people begin to make money just to have more money. You don't need a 7 bedroom house for you and your wife, you don't need a 100k BMW.

But overall, where I am going with this is that humans striving for more stuff and money created the situation in which people were gullible enough to believe that anything that is "e-something" or has to do with computers/internet will bring millions for each cent you put into it. Of course it worked for a while, when the first ones on this path made the money to be made and innovated the ways that were there to be improved.

I know a few of people that went from 12 years of experience in Emergency Medicine into Java by reading a few books because they wanted more money, or 40-year old construction workers that became instant "expert Web specialists." And another dozen of corporate "company representative speaking.. JUST a moment" office space-like lady workers who knew how to put together a memo or a company policy filled to the brim with meaningless bullshit.

A very interesting fact supporting this theory is that as of today a number of CS classes in University of Berkeley in California is 70-80% full, which differes from last few years when there was 20-30% more people than seats in the classes (quoting a co-worker who goes there right now).

Another words, people will go where the hen laying golden eggs is at, and they will make it lay as many as it can a day before they will kill it off by doing so. And unfortunately, those of us who are content with a golden egg once in a while will have to find another ways of doing what they like/love/want to do.

Hopefully, the hen is not dead yet, just out of eggs. ;)

site slowness

[ajdub]

the slashdot effect is in effect. we underestimated the traffic it would generate and are moving the script to a bigger machine now.

if you can't get to it, please bear with us and try again in a few hours.

thanks again

--adam

on the IT job or worker shortage

[diamond0]

This month's issue of Communications of the ACM features a reader forum titled "How to Address the Global IT Worker Shortage."

Ralph Castain of Fort Collins, Colorado wrote the following, which began on the same page (12) as Google's ad, "Google Seeks Expert Computer Scientists"

As someone who has been involved in industry and academia over the last few years, I find the current IT "shortage" to be somewhat self-inflicted due to several factors:

• Super-specialized requirements. Many companies express no interest in investing in employee training. Hence, we are treated to job listings requiring a combination of skills unlikely to be held by anyone outside that specific company. For example, a recent local job ad required candidates to have at least five years of experience with a highly specialized, industry-specific software package; three years of experience with a specific software-development package; and one to three years experience in that particular industry. When contacted, the human resource manager blamed the IT shortage for her difficulty filling the position.
• Low salaries/limited experience. A scan of recent job ads at one popular Web site showed an average salary range (where quoted) well below industry standards in the U.S. In addition, experienced programmers (for example, those with more than five years) report being rarely contacted for interviews, even when meeting all other knowledge requirements. This raises the question of whether there really is a shortage within the industry, or a shortage only of entry-level personnel willing to work for below-standard wages.
• Inflated job listings. Companies have become notorious for the placement of job listings on popular Web sites they have no real intention of filling. For example, a large multinational company recently placed more than 100 IT job openings on a Web site over the course of a two-week period. At the same time, the company announced massive layoffs, salary reductions, and forced vacations due to declining sales. How likely is it that any of these listings will ever be filled? Yet the IT shortage studies include such listings in their statistics, thereby distorting the overall picture.

As opposed to a shortage of IT professionals in the U.S., the recent experience of a local headhunter is much closer to the norm. After placing a job listing on a Web site for a SQL server DBA, the headhunter was deluged with more than 300 resumes and 100 phone calls within a 24-hour period. A similar experience followed another listing for a C++ programmer.

The fact is many of us in the corporate world outsource our IT needs to foreign companies and professionals simply because this practice is cheaper. Programmers from foreign countries are willing to work for much lower wages than their U.S. counterparts, especially if they stay overseas. The inefficiencies caused by such remote operations are more than covered by the savings in compensation.

IT shortage? Rather than trusting questionable statistics, I'd recommend asking the people in the job market and the head-hunters.

Ralph Castain, Fort Collins, Colorado

Re:on the IT job or worker shortage

[towatatalko]

"The fact is many of us in the corporate world outsource our IT needs to foreign companies and professionals simply because this practice is cheaper..." - I read studies that show "cheaper" is misleading in case of outsourcing, perhaps in the short run it might be cheaper and only when that is possible by hitring out of the coutry vendor, but when you ousource you give up control of your tech. support or professional services to other entities. Obviously, outside vendors will not have the same level of loyalty to that company's product line as it is the case with native support. The real reason companies outsource is that their managers commit over and over again mismanagement mistakes by dogmatically believing outsourcing is the answer to everything. It is not, and it is usuly cheaper to train a person internally than to have outsources be paid double that especially in the US. It so happens that I know some figures. One ousourcing position can cost up to $5-6k/month for the 1st level support, wile native support engineer by taking the same pay can provide 1, 2 and often 3rd level support that includes software and custom developement. At the same time ousourcing inflicts problems often related to customer satisfaction. They aren't as polite or diplomatic to customers as native support and can't answer more sophisticated questions that come up. In short, don't relay on outsourcing to be the answer to everything or even most problems.

Re:on the IT job or worker shortage

[mj6798]

The fact is many of us in the corporate world outsource our IT needs to foreign companies and professionals simply because this practice is cheaper.

And your point is? This is how global markets work. This has happened to many industries: agriculture, cars, steel, etc.

Programmers from foreign countries are willing to work for much lower wages than their U.S. counterparts, especially if they stay overseas. The inefficiencies caused by such remote operations are more than covered by the savings in compensation.

What makes you think it's "inefficient"? Right now, many information technology companies are located in the US because skilled foreign labor can come to the US and work here. If skilled foreign labor can't come to the US, those jobs won't go to US citizens. Instead, more and more of US-based operations and management would move to Europe and the more developed parts of Asia. See, no inefficiencies there.

This upsets me

[litewoheat]

After playing with the chart for a while and noticing the indication of an exodus from the bay area I began to get upset that all these "dot.com" people came to to bay area, jacked up the median rental and home prices, then bailed after things started going bad. Although rentals and home prices have started to level off they have, for the most part, not gone down. If they did that would accelerate our decent into resession. That sad thing is that's inevitable. Foreclosure rates have already gone up.


So now what I have to say to all the people who flocked here, threw high-test gasoline on the fires of the economy, burned everything to a crisp then took off, Thanks a whole lot from someone who was here a long time before you! I feel no pain for any of the dot.com loosers.

Re:This upsets me

[juuri]

Are you kidding? Rental prices other than inside SF have started to plummit. There are tons of new condos/apartments that just got finished where the prices are damn good for the area. Even downtown prices on smaller units are only slightly more than they were 3 years ago and if the drops continue they will reach the rates they were in 97.

Seriously look in the north bay, east bay and to some extent at the south bay. You will notice tons of completely new properties offering discounts as extreme as 2.5 months off your yearly rate. They are hurting... and this is good for us.

Home prices on the other hand are still absurb. 350k for a small 2 bedroom in an ok neighborhood is just fricken robbery.

Re:This upsets me

[heroine]

Housing prices continue to rise because the guys who didn't bother looking 2 years ago have replaced the guys who left. $1.1 million is still bargain basement for a bay area house.

Re:This upsets me

[Waffle Iron]

I began to get upset that all these "dot.com" people came to to bay area, jacked up the median rental and home prices, then bailed after things started going bad. Although rentals and home prices have started to level off they have, for the most part, not gone down.

Don't worry, one day "the big one" is going to hit and reduce the whole area to rubble and ashes. After that, your real estate prices will be nice and cheap. :-)

Re:This upsets me

[daviddennis]

And you don't even get a detached house (I just looked at Daly City, which is the only OK Bay Area neighborhood I could remember off the top of my head). They start at a bit over $300k. In contrast, homes in a similarly mediocre neighborhood, Culver City, range from $230k.

You can get a pretty impressive castle in Woodside for $8,900,000, though. That's not much different from a similar castle in Malibu.

Curiously enough, you can get a prestigeous 94062 zip code (Woodside) for as little as $399,950, even if the name on the envelope is Redwood City. Being an outsider, I can't figure that one out, especially since I went all the way up to $1,650,000 and saw some very nice looking houses, but no Woodside. Last time I looked, entry level in Woodside was something like $ 560,000, but that kind of house probably doesn't go on the market that often and is most likely snapped up immediately when it does. My snap judgement from looking is that if anything, Woodside real estate is continuing to go up; I found nothing in Woodside under US$ 1.6 million or so, while last time I looked there were maybe ten or so properties cheaper. Or have they renamed half the place Redwood City? I'm a bit confused.

Ah well. No doubt someone will be willing to straighten me out.

D

Slashdot Job Referral Service

[BrookHarty]

How about starting a head hunting service linked to the /. amount of people in the techincal field.

Everyone bitches about issues, how about using /. as a portal for answers. And OSDN could even charge a small subscription fee for all the new services.

--
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

Re:Slashdot Job Referral Service

[Reality Master 101]

How about starting a head hunting service linked to the /. amount of people in the techincal field.

Available for hire: Perl, Apache, Linux programmer. Have only built l33t sites of a few thousand lines of spaghetti code. Will only work for "free" software company. Company must not use any Microsoft software. Regular Quake breaks a plus. Minimum salary requirement: $150K/year.

Their talent was wasted during the *boom*

[Anonymous Coward]

You have it backwards. It was during the boom when people were wasting their talent, creating useless software and websites, justified by insane business plans. These hard times are a correction. Their unemployment is a sign to people laid off from the boom that they have wasted their previous years, and they need to find something next that truly will be useful.

Re:Chart doesn't mean much...

[ajdub]

Well...

The resume is on there at the suggestion of someone on craigslist who said that I should put it on there. I thought it was a bit slimey but at the same time I figured that it couldn't hurt.

As far as it getting posted to Slashdot, I didn't post it and I *do* know the guy who posted it but I did not ask him to do so, nor did he tell me before he did it. (and his text is a bit cheesy, no?) :)

As far as useful statistics and normalizing based on total number posted. I am planning on adding that stuff. For the second version, I'm planning on adding normalizing, moving averages by day (right now it's only tallied by month) and possibly some other stats. (I've recieved a few good ideas from a few people and I've got some emails out to some math folks about how I might be able to do some interesting forecast graphs)

--adam

Armchair engineers have moved out.

[heroine]

There's definitely a difference in the quality of the emails I get from software engineers these days. They're much more technically adept.

Seems as if most of the computer scientists working for .coms neither had the interest nor the ability to solve real computer science problems and have now switched to non-technical, and for them, more interesting careers. Wired ran a story about how many armchair engineers from the 90's went back to school and followed their true passion to become actors, artists, and writers.

You might say the quality of software being written today is slightly up compared to the 90's because the only people programming are the ones who really want to do it.

Another employment graph/script

[atlantageek]

Hi All,
Another unemplyed geek here. I wrote a set of perl scripts that graphed the # of Jobs available on computerjobs.com for several cities. It is on the main page of AtlantaGeek.com

Dotcom mentality and how it relates to Linux

[Desiato_Hotblack]

Long time reader, first time poster.

Just got my WIRED magazine subscription a short time ago, and what do I see on the cover "Why Linux will lose the desktop war: page 134".

Now before you tell me this has nothing to do with the dotcom boom and subsequent bust, I think you would do well to note these quotes from the article.

After 20 years as a business and technology journalist, [Russ Mitchell] joined Red Hat for nearly a year at the height of the tech stock craze. I was editor in chief of Wide Open News. Tough economics led to layoffs and I got whacked; I left with three months' severance and enough stock options to make a down payment on a house in San Francisco."

If that doesn't relate to the dot-com bust, I don't know what does. He goes on to state the following on the same page:

"Like the Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal who refused to surrender years after the bomb ended World War II, Linux zealots remain obsessed with beating Microsoft in desktop computing. Desktop computing? Don't they know? The war is over. Microsoft has won."

Pretty damming commentary from someone who supports Linux, don't you think? Or at least he still does, but on the server platform where it has gained the most ground.

Comments?

I'm sure that this will take forever to become a proper thread unto itself, that is why I've bothered to post it here today.

Desiato_Hotblack

Re:Dotcom mentality and how it relates to Linux

[szcx]

If I had to deal with the kinds of techs he described in his article, I'd be pretty pessimistic about the future as well;

Speedie, preparing for a business trip, turned her laptop over to a technician to get some dialup software installed. When he returned the machine, Windows was gone -- along with all Microsoft applications and Speedie's work files. Outraged, she complained, and when her boss (that would be me) confronted the technician -- a stringy little guy in a black trailer-trash T-shirt -- he simply stared back and smiled."

Zealots like these are the people killing Linux on the desktop. Is it any wonder so many companies don't take Linux (or its users) seriously? Would you hire a self-confessed Linux advocate having read this story? He might go crazy and delete all your files...

Source of figures

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I could really make good use of those figures that show that an outsourced 1st level support position can cost $5k-$6k. I would be very grateful if you could post a citation on those numbers.

Better data anyone?

[KFury]

As astounding as this data is, it would be infinitely more useful (and accurate) if it were normalized againt actuall traffic usage on craigslist, so the growing/weaning popularity of the site wouldn't skew the demo data.

Anyone wanna get Craig's archived logfiles?

Re:Chart doesn't mean much...but...

[Teun]

Still a neat project and interesting to play with for someone from 'out of town' (Europe)
The source(s) and limitations are stated on the site and any one knowing statistics knows aswell how to use this one.

Good luck on the job hunt!

Interesting correlations

[webmaven]

Hmm. Try this combination:

• March '98 to August '01
  
• apartments avaliable
  
• housing wanted
  
• resumes
  
• for sale

You can see that these all tracked each other fairly well up to December '99, when resumes/for-sale went off on their own, and apartments/housing stayed fairly even for a while.

Then, apartment availability started shooting up around August '00, kind of tracked resumes/for sale for a while, and then shot through resumes in February, picking up for-sale which has tracked it ever since.

I'll leave it as an excercize for the reader to correlate all this with external economic factors, but I think it's pretty clear that for a while people were selling stuff to make the rent while they were looking for work, and then between August and February people started selling stuff because they were leaving the area.

Funny variable in the URL...

[Nymus]

Anyone else notice the "yourmom=1" that is inserted in the URL when you use this? If you set it to zero or remove it, the graph won't use your start/end dates...funny.

ho ho ho he claims Graphics copyright

[johnjones]

the guy whop put the up the CG/webpage claims that the graphics are his copyright

correct me if I am wrong but he is redistributeing the database in a differant format

he is not doing any analysis or changeing the data in any way but redisplaying it

so he has no copyright claim at all as far as I can see bit of a joke really

regards

john jones

Re:ho ho ho he claims Graphics copyright

[hearingaid]

there was a case in the early 20th century in Britain where test answers got "unofficially" released. this is for a standardized test.

copyright was successfully claimed. for test answers.

he made the graphics. that's all he has to do really. the source data, he has no copyright on, true enough... the graphics though: he's got it.

thoughts on dotcom booms and busts

[ajdub]

while i don't have too much knowledge as to the effects of the dotcom boom and bust nationally and globally, i have formed a few opinions on what has happened locally.

while the boom sucked in a number of ways: computer jobs became glamourous and attracted a lot of goldrushers or hollywood ego types, which made working in these types of jobs a little obnoxious. the people who i hated in high school who were stuck up and going to fancy colleges found themselves getting rich in marketing and management positions, riding on the backs of the geeks who actually did the work. the talent pool was suddenly flooded with people who weren't really into what they were doing but they were doing it because that is where the money was. etc..

it also did a few cool things: it provided a way for slackers, artists, writers, etc to actually earn a living wage. (not exemplary salaries, but salaries that actually made it possible for them to live reasonably comfortably in the bay area) suddenly people that had been making peanuts could make a decent salary 30-50K and live comfortably knowing that they could pay their bills and some were gaining a skill that could turn into a career.

unfortunately, things got out of hand when the aforementioned fancy college educated folks had a little too much money to play around with and traders saw a wave of hype which they could ride to grow their assets. idiotic companies with pathetic business plans, idiot management and stupid ideas were recieving insane amounts of venture capital, which they were happy to spend the majority on things like office adornments, lame marketing and other things irrelevant to the core products they were building.

when this all was happening, the rest of the economy grew to support all these new businesses needing services and now that they're all gone, not only is the technology industry affected, but also the industries they relied upon and the industries those industries relied upon. hopefully the ripple won't be catastrophic.

personally, i was happy to see the bubble burst at first for the reasons i listed above. i was sick of hollywood ego internet types and this sudden 'coolness' that surrounded all things internet. i was also sick of seeing people who had no real interest in technology at all get filthy rich off of the hype.

however, now my opinion has changed a little. a lot of my friends are in fairly gnarly positions as a result of the layoffs. they weren't trying to get rich, and never were. they just wanted a honest living wage for a days work. they had the promise of a career and living wage for the years to come laid out before them and now it's all vanished into thin air.

in one way, i think it's a good thing, because the boom distracted people from what they really wanted to do with their lives. while doing operations for a dotcom may pay decent, it's not the most productive thing to do with one's eight hours a day in the grand scheme of things. (given that someone is not completely a geek at heart) now people are being forced to reevaluate themselves and their master plans for life, some are going back to college, some are persuing art, others are getting involved in vocations that they've been meaning to do for a while and i think that that is a very good thing.

i think that it is also a good thing for technology. now that there are less distractions and promise of riches for geeks working on bunk technologies, there will a decent talent pool of geeks looking to work for a decent wage on something that is technologically cool. that is also pretty exciting. while venture capitalists may be stopping the handouts, they're not going to stop completely and now they're not going to have nearly as many proposals to review. i'm hoping that in the next couple years we'll see a number of new companies that are doing stuff that is truly innovative.

Beauty and Truth -- I wish I had mod points

[uptownguy]

...Anyone who just skimmed the above and has some mod points to spare, re-read the above post and mod it up.

More realistically, though, thinks UptownGuy...

You'll just have to settle for my high praise, anonymous coward, whoever you are. There is so much truth in what you wrote above... I actually took the time to read it and re-read it over 5 times. Especially the last paragraph. Truth with a capital "T" my friend. Techie or not, dot-com casualty or not, they are still words of wisdom!

Re:when to buy a house in the Silicon Valley?

[heroine]

I don't believe there was ever a time housing prices dropped in the bay area. Even in the recessions of 1992 and 1980 prices continued to rise, though at a slow rate. The key is to lock in a down payment while you're still young, before the inflation curve leaves you behind forever. Most of my college friends either got a house as soon as they graduated or forever paid rent.

Here's a multi-state jobs availability chart

[Fulton Green]

If you go to Atlanta Geek's home page, someone has been tracking the number of job postings for various cities around the USA, with data taken from ComputerJobs.com. If this is reflective of the actual IT market (when in fact it's also reflective of third-party recruiter activity), it would appear that most cities have lost 20% of their jobs in the past month, but Boston! They've leaked 30%!

Re:Here's a multi-state jobs availability chart

[sethg]

it would appear that most cities have lost 20% of their jobs in the past month, but Boston! They've leaked 30%!

What's the change over the past year? Given the number of colleges and universities here, I wouldn't be surprised to find a big peak in May/June, for hiring both recent graduates and summer interns, and a corresponding valley in August/September.

Re:I would never hire you

[sigwinch]

You hire people based on how good their Slashdot posts are? I've heard of weird interview techniques, but this takes the cake!

Self-inflicted.

[codeforprofit2]

The economic hardtimes that the dotcom (and other IT-related) companies are seeing now it quite self inflicted.

Those companies has not had a working business-model. The major part of the dot-coms have lived on banners and thats just unrealistic.

In you put ads in a newspaper you can get nice big ad-space that really draws attension to your products. Compare that to a banner at the top of a site, do even someone look at them?

And for other IT-related companies I think the focus on market-share instead of revenue just makes it impossible to keep companies alive. Many seems to have thought "market share is everything, revenue is something we deal with then the VC money is gone".

Many has given their products away for free and have thought that later down the line they are going to be able to charge for it. Personally I think it's very hard to make people pay for something that they got for free before. If not impossible.

it takes more than that

[mj6798]

Extracting data from a web site and graphing it is a useful skill, but I would expect any reasonably smart college student to be able to figure this stuff out. It takes a lot more than that to succeed and innovate when it comes to computers.

Re:If you have REAL talent

[mrobin604]

Hey, you mind letting me know when you get laid off, so I can remind you of your post and laugh at you??

I've known plenty of companies that lay off not based on "lack of talent" but because of high pay scales...

so those complaining about being unemployed are often unemployed because they won't take a 30-40% cut in their asking price.

(I have a friend who was a web producer who was looking for a year, and didn't find anything until he chopped his asking price and broadened his job objective... he was hired pretty soon after that).

I bet there aren't a whole lot of CEOs out there who've taken a 30-40% cut in what they get paid.

(IMHO, the "REAL WORLD" prefers "tinie punie" tricks... for example sales people are highly paid for the "punie" trick of being likeable and persuasive. More highly paid than those who have the REAL talents of making the things they're selling.)

-marsh

Salary-Based Layoffs

[fm6]

I've known plenty of companies that lay off not based on "lack of talent" but because of high pay scales...

All too true. I think this tends to happen most often in market-value-fixated companies that try too hard to improve their numbers. The idea is, "if we can get salary costs down, the street will like us better and our options will be worth something." Logical as far as it goes, but not usually in the long-term interest of the company. After all, there's usually a reason some people get paid more!

This is also the basis of much age-based discrimination -- older and more senior workers cost more. Illegal, but so what?

Here's a prime example that any slashdotter can relate too, even though it's not in our industry. Back in 1994, Paramount had an extremely successful syndicated series. But it had been on the air for seven years, all the regular actors had huge fan bases and plenty of leverage to demand higher and higher salaries. The solution must have seemed obvious: cancel the series and start something close enough to grab the same viewer base. So The Next Generation (not great TV, but it had its moments) was replaced by the putrid Voyager.