LA Times Examines Silicon Valley

Richard Finney writes "The Los Angeles Times has a special section on Silicon Valley. Most of the stories focus on the 'survivors struggling through the toughest stretch in tech industry history.' There's also a story on Five Reasons to Hope - New technologies that may help Silicon Valley rise again: Biotech, microsensors, nanotechnology, flexible electronics and data mining. We'll see."

Comments

Biotech is a long way off

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that biotech is going to take twenty years to get to the point of being well understood and used for mass market products.

Not that I would not like another boom sooner, I have a few years experiance of designing electronics and writing embedded software but no degree. I got fired a few weeks ago, my long term plan is to become a plumber. I expect to be doing menial jobs for a few years and do some night classes and self training.

peoples opions from the area

[odyrithm]

A mate of mine lives in San Jose, and as far as he's concerned the valley is dead, and will stay that way for a long time yet(3-5years), he's a very good coder and has everything from mcse to cisco certs.. yet he's still to find a job after the .com crash.. it would be very interesting to hear from other /.'ers that are from the area to comment on this..

Re:Progress marches on... slowly

[ergo98]

You have to realize that the PC boom didn't segway immediately into the Internet boom.

Was that segway a typo, intending segue, or were you being clever? :-)

In any case, the "boom" had exceedingly little to do with any particular technology, but it had to do with a mad rush to the trough with a lot of investment bankers making a lot of money, and like all overblown bubbles eventually it burst. It may as well have been a boom over pet rocks (err, P2P Open Source Bluetooth Linux pet rocks) or hoola hoops for all the actual technology mattered.

Quick fact that a lot of people fail to appreciated: Year over year tech spending has been increasing year over year, albeit at a small amount. Today more is spent on technology and technology solutions in the computer arena than it was during the "super boom". Tell me again about what will bring about the next windfall?

3rd world countries more loyal to citizens

[cryofan2]

That is why it is harder for an American to go do programming overseas, than it is for a 3rd worlder to come here and do programming.

Actually, that is true for immigration in general. I would like to take my saving in about 2-5 years from now, put it in the bank to draw interest, and go move to rural Latin America where the rents are super-cheap.

But it is pretty hard to do that.