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Silicon Valley - The Geeks Are Back In Charge?
securitas writes "The New York Times' Steve Lohr reports on a fundamental shift taking place in Silicon Valley in the post-dotcom era: the geeks are back in charge. New start-ups and companies that survived the bubble 'are based on innovation and are run by people with deep technical skills.' These companies have real technology and a solid technical base that have historically been the bedrock of Silicon Valley - something that was temporarily forgotten during the dotcom bubble. Profiled companies include Tellme Networks (speech recognition), InterTrust (DRM - digital rights management), VMware (virtual machines) and Scalix (Linux e-mail servers)."
How does tellme.com fit in here as a company run by geeks? They got over 200 million in capital for a quintessentially dot-com biz model: a consumer-oriented the-advertising-will-pay-for-everything phone service. They've only made it through the dot-com crash because they're sitting on a ton of cash and they've got AT&T backing them. Besides, they're less technology producers than technology integrators: the speech recognition engine they use is from Nuance.
Anyway, nice premise for an article. It's good in concept, but the writer could've done a better job finding companies that really represent the ideal of companies run by geeks and driven by innovation.
Is there a reason why DRM shouldn't be labeled "real technology" besides the fact that you don't like it?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
1. There were an awfully large number of "Learn $TECHNOLOGY in 21 days" types who got hired. Actually, more seriously, there were an awfully large number of "Know the buzzwords associated with $TECHNOLOGY in 21 days so you can pass interviews" types. I know this, I had to work with so many of these people. Programmers who didn't understand such basics as modularity and FOR...NEXT loops, who couldn't read a two paragraph spec, etc.
These people were eventually fired or laid off, which in turn lead to an assumption of guilt on the part of anyone fired or laid off. But I also know skilled, talented, individuals laid off from my own company, which didn't feel the recession (or, if anything, benefits from it - we do consultancy that tries to make certain types of retail outlet more efficient and profitable in a business where it's vital stock keeps moving) who were discarded due to temporary shortages or office politics. If I started my own business, I'd hire several of the people we laid off in an instant, above many of those I work with today.
2. Programmers got greedy. Seriously greedy. I recall two or three years ago reading poster after poster on Slashdot protesting that employers with problems finding employees were just paying too little, and if only they understood that $150,000 was an entry-level salary these days they'd see...
What they forgot was that few businesses can justify $150,000 on a computer programmer. Those that were paying those kinds of salaries were generally the dot-coms, who also had no business plans and were little more than VC money-pits. But because they were paying so well, programmers held out for those kinds of salaries, with the disasterous consequences we're seeing now - something close to a tech recession, many competant programmers drawing welfare, and businesses outsourcing programming - a medium where traditionally communications are already awful and need improvement - to other countries where they can find cheaper labour. Businesses were forced to look elsewhere, and that's exactly what they did.
How you resolve this issue is open to question. Despite general pessimism, the fact is businesses that need programmers will always find it easier to locally hire than set up labour pools in other countries, but it's time for some realism and some recognition that a safe, well paid, job is usually better than a temporary obscenely-paid one.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Gold is rare. Gold is also a commodity. It is bought, sold and traded as well as used as a basis for buying, selling and trading other commodities.
.
Technical skills may be both rare and needed, misunderstood and overlooked by managment and HR, but that does mean such skills are not a commodity. If they can fire you and hire someone else to do the same job, you are a commodity. Like it or not, right or wrong, businesses are structured in such a way that anyone can be fired and replaced by someone else.
Checkout clerk is actually a small technical skill. You can confirm this by going through nearly any Wal-Mart check out line. The low quality of of most checkout clerks is palpable. When you hit a good one these days it's almost a religous experience. I had someone actually count back my change to me the other day. It made me want to marry her.
This doesn't mean that checkout clerks are not a commodity.
You know the joke?
"What did the employed physicist say to the unemployed physicist?"
"Would you like fries with that?"
10% of the population? Hell, that isn't even rare. Colleges sell Master degrees, and even doctorates, as commodities. Get the right degree, get the right job. I'm sorry, but that's a pure commodity market. The very fact that you're talking about it in terms of job interviews proves it's a commodity market.
Get the right degree, go live in the jungle with gorillas. Get the right degree, live in a garret/basement writing poetry/free software.
That is not a commodity technical market.
The second you walk into an HR department you pick up a big sign that says, "I am a commodity, please buy me."
If they do not, but buy someone else instead, that proves you are a commodity.
The fact that they can't differentiante between a good apple and a bad apple when they are in the market for apples does not mean apples are not a commodity.
There is a way not to be a commodity. Don't walk into the HR department. It really is that simple.
But that's hard. You'll need some serious skills to pull that off. Skills the other 25 million engineers don't have. Some of those skills have nothing to do with the tech. They are life skills.
Aquire them. Make yourself unique in your niche and able to maintain life and limb without an HR department (although this may mean going to live in the jungle with gorillas. If what you want is a condo and BMW you just might have to enter the commodity market. In this case you'd be better off producing the commodity rather than being the commodity).
Otherwise you can just keep adding your resume to the stack that grows higher, and higher, and higher. .
Other than that, I'm with you.
KFG
I think the geeks have always been in charge (though I think "nerd" is a more appropriate characterization). It's just that for awhile, during the dot-com-boom, a bunch of MBAs showed up and snowjobbed management with their magical doublespeak skills and ran the companies foolish enough to drink their kool-aid into the ground.
Meanwhile, the many solid companies with a solid foundation of technical talent who maintained control over their ventures just plugged on. With all the FOD out of the way, they look like they're new when they're not.
Not only that, if you are skilled, employers for unskilled jobs are reluctant to hire you for fear you'll leave them as soon as you find a better job (which is true). Unless of course they know you can't find a better one because the economy sucks so bad (which is also true).
Skilled tech workers are in a double bind. Their jobs are being replaced by H1-B's, or outsourced overseas. The problem is companies go too far in reducing labor costs. Everyone wants the best bang for the buck. I do to, but you still have to spend money. It should be about getting the most value for your dollar and not spending the least you can possibly get away with.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
bad programmers got greedy. good programmers are worth their weight in gold.
The same could be said of good teachers. Or good dentists. Or lots of other jobs that require equally as much talent, innate skill and hard work to earn the label of "good". Seriously, just because our field of interest happens to be technology doesn't mean there aren't other careers out there where dedicated, brilliant people don't stand apart from their peers and make a difference. And good _______ usually make more money than bad __________. But salaries for other fields still don't compare to what techies are paid. Programmers are still unrealistic about their expectations; management not so much... which is why you see the disasterously short-sighted trend to outsource overseas. They might be making the wrong decision, but they are reacting to a very real problem: IT salaries are still overinflated. (I say "over" inflated only because I think we are in the process of a correction in that valuation. If you want to get pedantic, I think that the market always pays PRECISELY what it values for careers. By definition. But because we are in the middle of a correction, those salaries will be sharply different in a few years.)
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.