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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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, 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.
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.
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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