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In SIlicon Valley: Profits up. Employment Down.
popo writes "The New York Times (free yada yada) has an interesting report on the changing landscape of Silicon Valley tech companies: Profits are soaring but employment figures are not. This dynamic points to significant future shifts down the road for Silicon Valley companies like Electronic Arts and Cisco. Interestingly, the culprit isn't just outsourcing. Huge leaps in worker productivity and automated processes are also responsible for the decreased need for new labor."
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Have you Meta Moderated t
Where are those profits going?
While CEO salaries are going up faster than lower level workers, the CEO salary is a cost to the corporation subtracted from the calculation of the amount of profits.
Corporate profits are used in a number of ways - funding acquisitions, paying dividends, buying back stock, etc. Generally profits end up in the hands of the stockholders in the form of increased dividends or stock value.
I've worked my share of 80+ hour weeks, and productivity doesn't go down.
Well, you think your productivity doesn't go down. One of the skills that decays quickly is evaluating how you're doing, and not just for beign tired. Drunk drivers think they can drive just fine, for example, and any hiker knows how insidious hypothermia is. As one back-country guide puts it, "the victim is the LAST to realize s/he's in danger".
My productivity kept on pretty much as normal. No 'cancelling out', no 'negative work', no extra mistakes. Yeah it can get a bit boring and maybe physically tiring, but that's why it's called 'work'.
There's plenty of evidence that, whatever applies for you, that's not true for humans. Here's a good summary: Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work.
I think you people are just lazy: you don't want to do much work,
Wrong! I love my work. But even when I'm obsessed with a new project and could happily work around the clock, I've learned to limit myself to 50 hours a week or so. More than that and I start losing my judgement and my enthusiasm. I can tell this pretty easily, as I write unit tests for all my code. After a couple of weeks of crunch mode I spend a lot more time bumping my head against the unit tests. And after a couple of days off to recover, I'll often realize that particular problems I was brute-forcing my way through could have been solved much more efficiently.
Just for the record SOX or 404 work, which is required for publicly traded companies MUST have a robust backup system. Since most companies want to go public they spend the money on stuff like that. Just FYI.
I don't mean to be inflamatory about this, but the way that companies are being run in Silicon Valley just WREAKS of the Harvard MBA way of doing things. Seriously guys and gals, if you ever have the priveledge of running your own company, don't ever ever hire one of these snakes. You'll find yourself drowning in the bad karma that they'll pump into your company/life. 'Nuff said.
I live in Silicon Valley. It seems like everyone is hiring right now. Startups are springing up like mushrooms and huge companies are funding new efforts. In my recent job search, I got five offers locally. But you have to know your stuff. Most companies grilled me extensively on languages, databases and algorithms. It's fortunate that my ongoing interest in computers led me to keep learning while I was working at my last job.
We are phonescreening a lot of candidates, and almost all are unsatisfactory.
To combine my experience with the idea that "employment is not rising," I guess that the Valley still has many unqualified programmers. As companies get better at screening, these people will be unemployed more often.
If you are a good programmer with the right skills, the Valley is a very exciting place to be right now.
I think you need to do more research on the distribution of wealth, because you contradict yourself. You say that it's "insane" for 10% of people to own 90% of listed companies shares. This implies that you believe that, in a larger sense, it would be wrong for a small minority of citizens to control the vast majority of wealth. On that much, we agree. But while more ordinary people own shares than before, this is not the same as having wealth. In the old days, owning shares literally meant a share of the profits, in the form of dividends. Nowadays, most companies do not pay dividends, or if they do, they pay out only a tiny fraction of the profits. That means that stock ownership isn't really ownership, in the truest sense of the word. If I owned Acme Widget company in it's entirety, you can bet that I would get 100% of the profit. If own one millionth of Microsoft, do I get one millionth of the profit? I certainly do not. What I get instead is a piece of the speculative market for MS shares. And as the lancing of the dotcom bubble proved, the stock market is not a perpetual wealth generating machine - not for anyone who is not at the top rung of the corporate ladder.
By focusing on ownership of corporate shares, you have failed to consider the larger question of distribution of wealth in general. I recommend this site:
http://www.lcurve.org/
It graphs the distribution of income in this country by representing the population of the US as living on a football field, with their annual income represented by a stack of 100 dollar bills. The median family dwells exactly on the 50 yard line, and makes about 40 thousand dollars a year. That stack of Benjamins is just 1.5 inches high. The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 4 inches high. At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about a foot high.
And then a really odd thing happens. The stacks of bills don't keep getting a little bit higher. They start to shoot straight up into the sky(the L shaped "curve" that the site's title refers to). So how high does that stack get at the 100th yard, in Bill Gates territory? It's a stack of 100 dollar bills 30 miles high.
Does that seem sane or insane to you, Robert?
Demo your program
Secure a licensing contract
Quit
Profit.
So you're saying we should all invest our pennies into corperate America now, and live a low class, poor life style until we're around 55 perhaps... where we can MAYBE buy a house?
:)
:) You're out to enjoy your profit.
Is that the goal in life? Waste it investing, then cash out for 10 years of life and die?
Hey its a plan... but is it really living?
Frankly I find it a little scary that our government now wants us to hand over our money to corperations and allow them to generate our retirement wealth.
The current administration almost seems like they would force us at gun point to hand over our money to the rich... but of course they cant say that.... so they tell us our Social Security system is going bankrupt.
Really the country is going bankrupt, they're putting us in debt, the rich are profiting higher than ever and paying less taxes than ever... and not paying our work force. They're not employing more people here. They are doing what all rich people do when they profit.... buy a new house
JUST like we all would, if we just happened to come into an extra few million dollars this year.
Sure, maybe you would employ a house keeper and a gardener for your nice new home... but you're not really out to start a buisness
The country is in decline. And i agree... FUCK that 60" plasma from South Korea. We really dont need it, and its over priced as is.
As for not blaiming the rich people.... that's just not going to happen. The rich are those in power. Those in power have affect those who are not. The worse the lower class/middle class get, the more blaim will be placed upon the rich.
If the rich do not provide jobs... what money shall the workers of this country invest in the coroperations? Work at mcdonalds lately? They dont exactly pay you enough to invest in 300 shares of Microsoft.
I agree investing is important. I do it myself with the very little money saved from my better paying job days. I dont make much anymore these days in our declining country. But my view on investing is that it's a game for the rich. The rich benefit greatly in the game, while the poor really cant play the game to its fullest.
The game is riddled with curruption. We just came out of a huge investing stock market boom a several years ago now... and as we look back... those great days were full of the most currupt stockbrokers/agencies, and corperate trickery than ever before.
They took our money and ran.
If we're to truly rely on the stock market and become a nation of rich people investing in the corperations that control the world.... Then we need a fair stock market with no bullshit, and STRICT oversight.
But in the world of power and greed... how can we expect lawfullness.