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Silicon Valley - The Geeks Are Back In Charge?

Posted by simoniker on from the rain-rain-go-away-suits? dept.

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)."

2 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Myths by cubicledrone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1) Everyone fired or laid off post-dot-com was a skill-less, freeloading slacker who got their technical skills from "Learn $TECHNOLOGY in 21 days" books.

    False. In fact, middle-management is now finding their IT department unable to do much of anything without a huge budget increase or new equipment. Middle-management, as expected, is still sitting there, having meetings and trying to figure out what to do.

    2) Anyone who can't get a job as a programmer now is a skill-less, freeloading slacker who got their technical skills from "Learn $TECHNOLOGY in 21 days" books.

    False. There are Masters Degree holders in both engineering and scientific fields of IT study who cant rent interviews, much less jobs.

    3) Technical skills are a commodity.

    False. Perhaps 10% of the working population has the training, education and experience to build a complete computer program. Middle-management, unable to understand this fact, much less the technologies they are in charge of, continues to presume that ordering a database is no different than ordering new file cabinets.

    When these and other myths are no longer givens in the discussion of improving the IT department, then, and only then, will things improve.

    --
    Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
  2. one of them is a lawsuit company by MobyTurbo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Intertrust, an example of a "geek company" in the article, stopped being a technology company with over 300 employees, and became a patents-on-DRM IP lawsuit company with a little over 30 employees, and no new programming. They are now involved with a lawsuit over DRM features of Windows Media Player.

    I don't know why the New York Times chose them as an example of a "geek company" really the only true example of that was VMWare, which never was a dot-com bubble company in the first place.