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.

Comments

ITAA has won too many victories

[nabucco]

With hundreds of thousands of H1-Bs in Silicon Valley, and 200,000 more on their way each year, the ITAA has won it's victory against engineers (aside from their doing away with FLSA overtime requirements for computer professionals, or overturning repetitive stress injury laws). It's never going to be the same for engineers unless they start educating themselves and supporting professional organizations of the like that doctor's (AMA) and lawyer's (ABA) have.

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.

Moore's law and Silicon Valley

[Alien54]

Given the sheer number of companies, as well as the connections for finance, the attitudes that worked well over the past 20 to 40 years are gfoing to be hard to kill off by the simple collapse of a speculative bubble. There is still some demand for the product, vs the craze, let's say, of the tulip industry in Holland a long time ago. While that is taken as a typical example of a stock bubble, it is very different than what happened with the internet.

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)

Re:Why??

[lysurgon]

why would any company try and cripple it's self with the plysical location of being in Silicon Valley?

Because location matters. It matters when you have to get people to move somewhere to work for you. It matters what the culture surrounding your business is. It matters what your employees do when their off work. Are they bing stimulated and engaged by other bright people with hip new ideas or are they at home with a miller high life watching NASCAR?

I personally have a soft spot for High Life, but in all seriousness location is a key factor if you want to have a great company. There's a lot more to making a breakthrough than the bottom line of rents and such. It's the difference between turning a profit and being "insanely great".

Most high tech companies on the cutting edge are going to fail no matter what. The Edge [c.f. William Gibson] that pushes them over the top is not the ability to cut costs on rent and equipment, it's highly talented people that are motivated to work for your company. With all due respect for both geographic regions, that's a hard sell in the Midwest and the South. If you're looking to take an already proven idea and turn some profit, the Midwest, South and Northwest are where it's at. AOL started out in Virginia for a reason.

To conlclude, there's only one Broadway, there's only one Wall Street, and there's only one Sillicon Valley. You're either there, or your not really in the game. It's one of the many things that doesn't make economic sense, (love, charity, punk rock, etc) yet it is a real phenomina.

Capital and how it is spent

[Infonaut]

Silicon Valley is crowded, expensive, and generally lacking in culture. I think most people who have lived in any major metro area and then have lived in the Valley can attest to that.

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.