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Silicon Valley Rebirth?
broohaha writes "Using the analogy of fire clearing dead wood and making room for new life in a forest, there's a Newseek article out on the goings on in Silicon Valley these "post-bubble" days. Subjects briefly covered are Intel, Google, and Wozniak's new venture, Wheels of Zeus." It'd be difficult to be literally rebirthed from the thousands of tons of concrete that now seemingly cover the Valley, but hey, as a metaphor, it works.
For instance, there's a bill in Congress, HR 3222, which links the number of new H1-B visas granted to the unemployment rate. What professional organizations are pushing to get this bill a hearing? It's pathetic that IT worker's are less organized than doctor's, lawyers or even steel workers (who just got a nice present from Bush in terms of tarriffs). Until engineers start educating themselves, and then their fellow engineers, and joining or forming organizations like Washtech, CESO, AEA and the Programmer's Guild, this post-boom slump will last a long, long time. Same old 60 hour weeks and 24/7 oncall, but for less and less pay.
I suspect, however, that employees might have other priorities than the illusion of night life and culture. I mean, let's face it: how many of techies go to the opera? Or do all of the other things supposedly offered by a large city? Do you go to Starbucks to hang with your fellow developers, or use e-mail or chat?
I'm relocating from Northern Virginia to Florida because I can live like a king on my salary and because, frankly, every time I have to fight a throng of people to do something up here, I feel heart muscle degenerating.
That's all part of my changing priorities, and I've observed similar changes in other technical folk.
I've discovered a smaller place with better traffic that has all of the things I need (or a broadband connection to order them), but few of the things that frustrate me. To dismiss smaller cities as enclaves of NASCAR-watching idiots forgets a fundamental truth: the people in other cities are just as idiotic but in different ways.
Yeah, Broadway and Wall Street and Silicon Valley are centers of their industries, but there's a reason the real players eventually move away from them, too.
You mean 80% Black? What's wrong with that? You must be a racist.
No, I mean that like the once-proud American auto industry, high tech will lose out to cheaper imports of equivalent or higher quality. Japanese auto manufacturers ate the lunch of Americans - be careful that Indian and Russian programmers don't do the same.
The reason there are American auto workers still is that the Japanese chose to build manufaturing facilities in the US. So what I'm saying is, get the H1Bs in and make them into Americans, don't drive them overseas to compete on their terms.
The converse applies as well. Having too many companies can hurt you. I remember in the late 90's my old company had a satellite office in San Jose. I'd have some people I would work with out there who would leave after 6 monthes. You'd get comfortable with the people you were working with and then they would go across the street to another company. The California workers earned a lot more than I did(of course my salary here in Utah bought more) but because of the constant churning, it seemed that they always got less done. They were always training new people. By the time they got up to speed, it was time to jump jobs again. The insanity of it all used to frustrate me enormously.
I assume this has changed now with bubble having burst. But, I would likely never locate a company in Silicon Valley for this reason alone.
If you choose your location well, you shouldn't have any trouble finding adequate people.
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But SF and Santa Cruz aren't in Silicon Valley - just ask anyone who lives in San Francisco or Santa Cruz, and they'll definitely tell you that they don't live in Silicon Valley.
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