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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.
Yes Silicon Valley is in a low.
No that doesn't mean it will rise again.
SV has relied on waves on new technology being ultra-successful. Ten years ago they were in crisis like today, but lucky for them, the Internet happened. (And a similar 5-10 yr cycle with chips, PCs etc). Will there be another technology rebirth to build companies on anytime soon? That's the real indicator of a rebirth.
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 am not trolling but I didn't learn anything, read anything that made me think further, or enjoy this particular article. What am I missing here? Three minutes of my life apparently.
There was a tech boom.
The boom turned into a bubble.
The bubble burst.
Life is going on.
If brevity truly is the soul of wit, I'm the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The internet has a major infrastructure component to it that continues to grow. the whole thing probably will continue nicely until moore's law fails.
At that point it will depend a bit on how much that planet has been wired, and how close we are to the "singularity" or machines being "smarter" than humans.
murphy's law, working in reverse, says that this will happen at or before the point that machines achieve human level intelligence, making it impractical to have armies of super intelligent robots develop before humans figure out what to do about it. (hahaha)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
As far as I can tell, at least this WOZ shit is part of the new tech bubble: wireless. Wireless is great and all, but the adoption rate of wireless usage, at least in the US, is incredibly low. People use cellphones, but only the super-geeks actively go beyond that to use a PDA, WAP, etc. There's a trememndous amount of hype around wireless* right now, and it seems like the gap between tech businesses spending on wireless* and actual consumer usage is even greater than the gap between dot-com spending and consumer usage of the Net.
...The economy rises, and falls. The tech sector also went through another boom, during the 80's (during the cold war era) ...but then there was a massive batch of layoffs due to defense cut backs ... then along comes the proliferation of the internet, and another boom... then a big burst in the bubble from bad investors... now another rise... ad nauseum....
Thats why I laugh when people think the End Is Near (tm). And, I also laugh when they think that these days are 'hard times'. No, hard times was when during the 80's my father would go on strike against Ma Bell for 6 months to a year at a time, and try to support 3 kids at the same time... This current market slowdown is an inconvenience... not the big catastrophe everybody seems to think it is
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
why would any company try and cripple it's self with the plysical location of being in Silicon Valley? you have to pay 10 times what your competitors do in the midwest and the south do for the building, labor,equipment,supplies,everything.
The insanity of overpaying for everything that caused the crash of a few years ago does not need to be repeated....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you were like many of the local workers who were renting and saving up, you simply cannot stay after your job evaporated. I'm not sure if the people are leaving to Seattle, Austin, India or whatever, but don't hold your breath waiting for Silicon Valley to rebloom.
In the long run, don't expect the job providers to stay, either. Other states are giving much better tax incentives to tech firms, who realize that Bay Area workers are much more expensive (and only marginally better), not because they're greedy, but because they have to pay the outregeous living costs.
From the article:
"'After hiding in the bushes, they use those little tin "cricket-clicker" doodads to find each other and regroup.'
"Click-click.
"Click."
I'm reminded sharply of an episode of "Dilbert", where, after Dilbert shows off to Dogbert his latest useless technological toy, Dogbert says to him, "The scary thing is that progress depends on people like you."
hyacinthus.
You seem trollish, but I'll take the bait.
"Do you ever wonder why companies bring in people like myself (from India in my case)? It is because they can't afford what American tech employees expect for income and benefits..."
Wrong. They can afford it, they simply would rather pay less. From a business standpoint, it makes sense, but it's still a shitty thing to do while the country is in a recession. Allow me to introduce you to a bit of Western philosophy: Charity starts in the home.
"...because Amercian workers complain if they have to work more than 40 hours, and because American workers are typically not as dedicated or as well educated as their off-shore counterparts (especially in ANY aspect of engineering).
This is a case-by-case scenario. For years I've worked the quirky hours of a network engineer and not once have I ever complained. But yes, I've met the type of people you're referring to. I'll even further agree that foreign IT workers, as a whole, do work harder than their American counterparts.
"I come to American to work, earn money, and send my savings home to support my family."
That's very nice. But because you're here, you are preventing an American from doing the same thing.
"This is a great country, but when people that call themselves US citizens feel infringed, they immediately attack foriegners."
This case is cut and dry. H1B workers take American jobs. Period. If all the H1B workers left, there would be more jobs for Americans. And since it is our country, I'm sure you'll understand that we think Americans should have first access to those jobs.
"Maybe this is why so many countries around the world utterly HATE america?"
Yeah. That's probably it. Because we blame foreigners for everything...
I'll tell you like I told a flock of Europeans I met while traveling: Americans do not care about foreigners. When I say we don't care, I don't mean we hate them. I mean we really don't care. They never enter our minds. I spend more time choosing what movie I'm going to see than I do about the petty causes of some country I've never been to.
And that's the way it should be.
Maybe if these countries spent more time thinking about themselves and unfucking their own lives/governments/economy/etc., they wouldn't even need to come here to work.
Make sense? Of course not. It's much easier to blame America than it is to fix a nation.
In summary, I hope you lose your job to a needy American. It's our country. Deal with it. Once we get stable again, you're welcome to come back.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
This case is cut and dry. H1B workers take American jobs. Period. If all the H1B workers left, there would be more jobs for Americans. And since it is our country, I'm sure you'll understand that we think Americans should have first access to those jobs.
Actually, I'm not sure this is accurate. You are assuming that the American education system provides enough workers of sufficient quality to fill the entire demand for highly skilled workers. That simply isn't true (in Europe, either).
Long term, if you care about American jobs, you are far better importing skilled workers from around the world, making them Americans who spend money in the American economy, pay tax to the American govt. etc, than leaving them in foreign countries where the cost of living is so much lower that they can undercut US companies wholesale, and suck value out of the US economy.
I'll tell you like I told a flock of Europeans I met while traveling: Americans do not care about foreigners. When I say we don't care, I don't mean we hate them. I mean we really don't care. They never enter our minds. I spend more time choosing what movie I'm going to see than I do about the petty causes of some country I've never been to.
Well, good for you. Software is a global business these days. You can't hide you head in the sand and hope that "foreigners" will go away - because if you do, Silicon Valley will end up like Detroit.
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.
There are also plenty of other areas that have the combination of nice weather, great universities, and educated populations.
But Silicon Valley is different in that the venture capital community there is not nearly as risk-averse as it is in many other places. While this leads to catastrophic failures (like the dot-bombs), it also leads to successes like Intel and Apple.
Another key factor is that in the Valley, having been involved in a start-up failure is not seen as a black mark - it's seen as proof that you've been tested, and that you've probably learned some lessons.
In my opinion, this willingness to experiment, learn from mistakes, and move on, is a hallmark of Silicon Valley business. I'm no fortune-teller, so I don't know if it will be enough to pull the Valley out of its current probems. But if the Valley recovers, I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The only problem with the H1-B visa program is that it unreasonably ties the visa holder to their employer in a manner that puts downward pressure on salaries. If all H1-B visa holders where allowed to easily change jobs they would not be at a competetive disadvantage regarding salaries and thus would not put a downward pressure on salaries in the industry. Immigration and immigrants are not the problem, bad public policy is.
Not to mention the obvious fact that the vast majority of US citizens are themselves descendents of immigrants who sound foolish and selfish when they rail against imigration.
Yes its fun to dig on this place - it has hubris, ego, and arrogance. But it also has the best array of tech talent in the smallest area of any place on earth. It seriously moving towards biotech and other emerging technologies. It will likely continue to be a center for venture capital. It continues to be an academic powerhouse.
So gets your digs in now while its still at a low. Ten years from now real estate there will be even more absurdly expensive, and there will be even more innovation coming out of this continuingly diverse ecology of ideas.
Yes, why would any company want to locate itself in the most concentrated, diverse market for tech talent in the world?
Where else can you hang out your shingle pushing some new-fangled cutting edge tech, and actually have a reasonable expectation of getting a renewable stream of labor that can actually keep up?
Sure you could find a plot of ground in the middle of Kansas for next to nothing, but you are also going to have a hard time getting talent through your door.
As a counter argument, I ask that you name three wildly succesful tech companies that locate themselves in the middle of nowhere.
To all the haters and disbelievers:
To say that Silicon Valley is going to be "reborn" is as obvious as saying that the sun will rise again someday. To say that Silicon Valley will never rise again is as stupid as saying that the sun will never rise again.
OF COURSE SILICON VALLEY WILL RISE AGAIN! How ridiculously obvious is that? Why? Because people want to be rich! Because people want to innovate! Where else are you going to do it, except in Silicon Valley? You have VCs, you have workers, you have the beautiful backdrop, you have the history. The real dreamers, the real entrepreneurs, the real winners aren't just going to drop everything and leave because it's too expensive or because there are no more jobs. THEY CREATE JOBS! If they need more money, they work harder!
I live in the heart of Silicon Valley. Yes, every apartment building has signs up BEGGING for renters. Yes, there are very few jobs, and yes I know many people that have been laid off, and some good friends that have gone back to their homelands like India because they have no hope of finding a job. These are the casualties of any recession.
But give it a year, a few years, and the innovators will rise again. Innovation == wealth creation. Everyone here has dreams of being rich and is willing to work hard for it.
You cannot fine the concentration of highly skilled workers like you can in Silicon Valley. I came from Toronto, Canada's largest city, and everyone there has a middle-class attitude. Work 9-5, get a 3% raise every year, go home and watch TV. I moved here because I was sick of it, and everyone around here has BMWs, $500000+ houses, and absolutely loves what they do. My own personal salary initially tripled upon coming here (as did my rent) and over the past 5 years, my salary has gone up 100% since then. I now work 10-12 hours a day, instead of 6-8 hours a day before, but I fucking love what I do. This is the difference, and this is why Silicon Valley will always rise from the ashes.
When you want to be in the movies, you don't go to Atlanta, or Tampa Bay, or Columbus, or even New York. YOU GO TO HOLLYWOOD, STUPID. If you don't make it in Hollywood, you aren't worth shit. It's exactly the same way with IT. You want to be in Silicon Valley if you want to make it big in technology.
Last time it was the Internet. Next time, who knows what it will be, but there will be a next time!
The American dream is not "make money in America and use it to support a family back in another country where the cost of living is pennies on the dollar". In fact, it has a lot to do with things other than economics, but what the hell, right?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Maybe if you got some exercise and some new threads you wouldn't have these issues. Every single I guy I have worked with here has gotten married over the years. Maybe your issues are...more systemic, lets say.
But a banker will tell you that your gross annual income must be no less than 1/3 of the value of the home.
What? No one would be able to buy their own house by that math. I don't know who fed you that statistic, but I've never heard it before and it really doesn't make any sense.
3. The reality of the situation is that there is no more room to build, and everyone commutes from the East Bay from as far away as Stockton, enduring horrible commutes. And while you're trying to save a few bucks on your $85k per year salary, you're paying $2000/month in rent. How can you save enough money to make a down payment? You can't. That's why my friend with a wife and two children was living with his parents for the last five years - he can't afford any property.
I can find you $800/month apartments in the South Bay. New units. If you are paying more, it is becuase you want to. If your friend decided to have kids before buying a house, he dinged himself. I know a number of people making in the $80-$90k range who are buying NOW, because they saved and didn't f themselves on rent.
What the hell kind of apartment did you live in?!? I have a nice two-bedroom with onsight laundry and a pool in Campbell, and I only back $1275.
I agree that the housing market is still a bit nuts, but that actually locks a lot of the old-school geeks in here (you know, there was business here before 1997).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
You have a very good point. Another thing I've noticed is that many startups are founded by fairly recent immigrants.
>>3. The reality of the situation is that there is no more room to build
Maybe for single-family homes, but one of the things that bugs me about the Valley is the lack of vertical thinking. Everything is a squatty building with maybe 2 stories.
Lets start thinking vertical. And don't give me that bs about earthquakes. Tokyo has more earthquakes and stronger ones, and they build things vertical.
On a development front, I am glad to see new condos and apartments being built in downtown Redwood City and Mtn View. Start with these then move to the single-family house if you so choose.
This brings up another thing that bugs me. Why do we in the US feel it is necessary to live in a house with a white picket fence and a garage? Shit, I'm happy to have a roof over my head and a toilet that works. When I lived in Europe for a short time, I loved that fact that I didn't need a car--I could walk everywhere in the city. The apartment I was in was on a street where a car could not even fit down it. Not even a Mini. It was great being able to walk everywhere. Allowed me to appreciate the city, let life pass by at a normal pace, and get some healthy walking no matter how sedentary my work was.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
For me, the 'hard times' were the 70's, when I'd just gotten married, got my first software-engineer job at $23K/year, and found that a small 2-bedroom house in LA near my work would cost over $150K.
But I'm sure people who lived through the 30's and 40's also have their stories...
The other component of WOZ asks the question "what nifty things could you do with automated location if that capability was nearly free?" What if all appliances, vehicles, computers, and people always knew where they were and everything else of importance was?
The trend toward general purpose GPS devices falling to $100 plus putting one in every vehicle and cellphone means someone will come up with a barebones tranceiver for a few dollars, if not already.
I don't think anyone's saying it's wise to set up a high-tech startup in the middle of Kansas farmland ... but I also think many people play down the suitability of larger midwestern cities.
For example, look at Chicago. You've got a number of major players there (AKA. Motorola), and IBM certainly has a large presence. In a recent survey, Chicago was in the top 20 for tech-savvy cities. You can't tell me it's impossible to find tech-knowledgable people in the Chicagoland area!
There are many disadvantages to the Silicon Valley area. Questions about electrical power available should certainly be key, along with the high risk of earthquake damage, heavy taxes and govt. regulation, occasional water shortages, and an expectation of high wages so employees can afford the high cost of living in the area.
Sure, the weather is great -- but I'd gladly trade some of that off for more personal freedoms. (I like being able to own my own home, instead of pay out big $'s just to rent from someone. I also like being able to drive my car when and where I want to go someplace, and not get penalized with stricter emissions requirements than the other 49 states have.)
Oh, and FYI, I don't even live in Chicago. I've just visited enough to know that it'd be a prime choice if I was to form a tech. company.
Pampered Americans--those who cheer scabs over unionization--are reaping the whirlwind they've sown.
That's funny, because I see it the exact opposite.
What union values skill over seniority? What union congradulates effort over doing the minimum? I can't think of a single one. It's the unions which promote pampered "Americans" -- I would call them pampered employees, not the ones who refuse to work for such an assinine old-boys club.
Actually, what I think is sadder is that you, living in a country with virtually the highest standard of living in the world, can still feel like you're in a state of crisis, and that someone from one of the poorest countries in the world should cut *you* slack for it. I don't flame very often, but you're pathetic as well as ungrateful.
Surprisingly, there *is* a decently viable tech/professional place that was Kansas farmland not very long ago: Overland Park, Kansas. (OK, so it is adjacent to Kansas City. :-)) But Sprint
just laid off thousands of people there, and I have to wonder what might be coming out of the
garages in the area in the next year or three. (For all I know, nothing.)
No I can't tell you that, but I can tell you that while there is *some* cost advantage to Chicago over California, it might not be as obvious a relocation spot as you might think for a SV concern. So it was no surprise that Boeing decided to go there, but that's perhaps a different story.
The funny thing about the electrical power shortage is that it disappeared the moment that the state signed high-price long-term contracts. The potential for earthquake damage is worrisome, but it would be interesting to compare the size of that risk with the bite that Chicago's winters take out of the infrastructure each and every year. California certainly has some bizarre governmental problems, but Chicago doesn't?
Anyway, I think the big key point in California's favor, and it's a huge one, is the quality of the public and private universities there. The UC system is as elitist a public institution as you're likely to find, and that's *exactly* what it should be. Throw in places like Stanford, and you've got a recruiting dream boat.
As far as employment costs go, you could actually make an argument that (at least in non-bubble times) real costs are likely to be lower in California than some other places, because people like California and are willing to pay more rent and/or take less money to work there. (I won't bore you with the details, but if you're puzzled by this, search for "hedonic regression" at google.
Now, I happen to agree with you that places like Chicago, Pittsburgh, KC and St. Louis might be expected to develop larger tech sectors than they already have, but it hasn't yet happened that way. Of these 4, perhaps the strangest omission is not Chicago, but Pittsburgh: There's a big university town with many cultural offerings, a large and growing international population, and every reason to succeed except that it just doesn't quite do it.
Babar
I find it interesting that out of several paragraphs of diatribe, a single phrase, with the magic word "union" in it, generated the string of responses, while the rest of the message seems to have slipped under the radar.
/. crowd has not.) Still, I've yet to see an organization other than unions or trade guilds or any word that symbolizes collective worker action that *attempts* to protect the individual from the predatory practices of the tool-owners. It's a fundamental truism that there's safety in numbers, and until Man decides that force isn't the best way to conduct his daily affairs, that truism will remain. And while it is true that union bosses are often little more than crooks, as Enron graphically displays, you don't have to wear the union label to rip off employees.
At any rate, I don't prefer unions, either (and I've worked for them in the past, which I imagine most of the
In a nutshell, the whole point is that, after all the preaching about open markets and open opportunity, when push comes to shove, Americans cry when someone else does it better than they do, and quickly circle the wagons to ward off those in "fair competition". The originator of this thread would certainly agree with this assertion, as would any Japanese circa 1985, or any European steel executive today. The fundamental irony of the situation is, most of the people here who are "free agents" working for the Man, can't see that in the Cave, their shadows are just as chained as the poor savages' are.
I don't have any answers for this, but I'm not going to pretend that it's not the way things are. Like you, I'm still taking the money, but the same qualities that make me a "solid information technology performer" absolutely refuse me to allow myself the luxury of cozy, fascistic consumerism that the Lego builders in the cubes around me indulge in.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This case is cut and dry. H1B workers take American jobs. Period. If all the H1B workers left, there would be more jobs for Americans. And since it is our country, I'm sure you'll understand that we think Americans should have first access to those jobs.
This statement has various flaws. It's almost funny to know that most people think that jobs are somehow a fixed and scarce resource. Jobs are dynamically created and destroyed based on the total economic activity, total demand, and total productive capacity of an economy. If all of the H1B visas were to leave America tomorrow, there would be a significant economic contraction and more job losses.
Y'see, when someone has a job, they earn money, but they also spend money. The money that they spend creates other jobs. If you get rid of this spending, then the subsidiary employment disappears as well. You may be able to replace these positions with less qualified Americans, but you have still reduced the total productive capacity of the economy by banishing these highly productive workers. This makes the economy smaller and less competitive, which lowers standards of living.
Actually, what I think is sadder is that you, living in a country with virtually the highest standard of living in the world
Not true. America merely has the second-highest per-capita GDP in the world. The main reason for this is that a small percentage of Americans are extremely rich.
Its not a piece of property that someone else can take.
Really? It supports the employee, and their family, home, car, insurance, medical benefits, taxes, food, clothing, furniture, schooling, investments, retirement, etc.
An employee uses a job, the employee doesn't own it.
Thus, the "fired on a whim" attitude of management. No different than the licensing controversy with software and CDs. Nobody owns anything, therefore nobody is owed when the "anything" is taken.
I see a lot of people who want everthing handed to them: jobs, inventions, music, etc.
Sure. After several thousand resumes and a year of looking, I'd say the average good programmer is about to the point where they should be handed a job.
Who are going to be the productive people of the next generation?
Nobody. Half the people will be sitting in gray cubicles, unable to contribute because they are obstructed by incompetent management. The other half will spend all their productive time looking for work.
(1)All work goes to India
That's simply not true! As the American software-development industriy disintigrates over the next twenty years, Russia will get its fair share of the industry as well! Maybe China too (they have adopted Linux; massive productivity is just around the corner...).
"It is because they can't afford what American tech employees expect for income and benefits, because Amercian workers complain if they have to work more than 40 hours, and because American workers are typically not as dedicated or as well educated as their off-shore counterparts (especially in ANY aspect of engineering)."
Which is an accurate state of affairs from 1995 to 2001, and applies to neither the period before that, or the present day. You might note that the state of affairs you describe is essentially identical to why Chinese immigrants were encouraged during the CA Gold Rush (1849-1851), and during the construction boom after the American Civil War, esp. in rail construction.
You should also look at the historical precedents for what happened after that.
"This is a great country, but when people that call themselves US citizens feel infringed, they immediately attack foriegners. Maybe this is why so many countries around the world utterly HATE america? "
Which (a) has nothing to do with the previous discussion, and (b) does nothing to explain why those foreign countries and their residents hate teh US on a day-to-day basis, even when we're doing something _good_ for them. Also, you might note that within a generation, you, too, will be assimilated (IF you decide to stay, that is). The same things were said about and by Germans, Irish, Italians, Japanese, and .
Well, yeah. That has something to do with it, and not really in the xenophobic way you're implying.
Let's establish a little background. Historically, people came to America as immigrants. They'd save up enough money to make the trip or make a deal with some individual or company to get here (or they'd get captured and put on a slave ship, but this particular atrocity isn't really relevant to the conversation we're having). Once here, they'd find work and raise a family. Sure, many sent money back to family overseas, but their family -- their spouse, kids, etc -- were here. This has a modern parallel with many modern immigrants from Latin America; in some parts of Mexico, for instance, the number one source of general income is money from relatives in the US.
The H1-B worker is a different matter, however. They, by definition, aren't here on any sort of permanent basis. Rather, they're here to provide what is supposed to be stop-gap expertise in technology.
This places H1 workers at a great advantage over both myself and the more traditional immigrants (let's call them naturalized citizens). While both I and naturalized citizens have our families and dependants here in America (where the cost of living is incredibly high compared to most of Asia), the H1 worker has their dependants in countries like India or Pakistan. This allows them to work for significantly less money -- H1's make, on average, 10-15% less than their citizen counterparts. Moreover, the initial costs related to an H1 mean that they represent a certain investment to a company, meaning that they're actually less likely to be caught up in layoffs than their citizen (again, "native" and naturalized) counterparts.
So, it's not a fair setup. It allows tech companies to hire cut-rate labor from overseas even while, say, the unemployment rate in the Valley hovers around 8%.
I resent the fact that any discussion of H1-B workers breaks down immediately into accusations of racism or xenophobia. It's not the people causing the problem, it's the system, a system which was bought and paid for by greedy companies looking to screw their potential workforce by diluting the labor pool. This is bad for me and, frankly, not so hot for the H1's, either -- they're getting paid less to do the same work, aren't they?
The fix is to eliminate these preferential visas and to instead fasttrack immigration for skilled tech workers. Let workers come to America and compete on a level playing field, and let these poor multi-billion dollar companies pay their workers what the market will bear.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.