Slashdot Mirror
Hiring Is Up in Silicon Valley for High-Skill Jobs
Carl Bialik writes to tell us the Wall Street Journal is reporting that five years after the dot-com burst, job growth is finally returning to Silicon Valley. From the article: "Doug Henton, an economist and co-author of the report, says with the growth in these creative engineering jobs, a new face of Silicon Valley is emerging. 'Ten years ago, this was an engineering Valley that pumped out chips and computers,' he says. 'Now it's all about creative tech and staying on the cutting edge.'"
People will never learn :) Everything goes in cycles, from real estate to employment to global warming.
"What Goes Around Comes Around", indeed.
You're going to be reincarnated as a slashdot editor, I can tell.
The market has never been that bad for people with plenty of experience. Our recovery isn't providing jobs for the entry-level people who have been having trouble getting in. Therefore, if you ask should I major in CS or whatever for good job opportunities, the answer is still no. When there are more experienced people in India, I suppose most of those jobs will go over, too.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I moved from NYC to the Palo Alto area in May 2000. That's right, just one month after the start of the long stock-market collapse and two months after the NASDAQ's peak, although of course no one knew these things at the time. I thus got to experience both the highs (insane traffic on 101, Sand Hill Road absolutely packed for two hours each afternoon) and the lows (significantly-better traffic on 101--admittedly a good thing in and of itself--and hordes of people losing jobs and moving back home each month).
It's important to distinguish between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The Valley has recovered--traffic on 101 has long since become awful again, as today reminded me--but San Francisco still hasn't regained the equivalent of all those bubble-related jobs that vanished into the wind in the 2001-2002 time period, and probably never will. (I've been living in San Francisco for going on two years now and have yet to meet anyone who is working in a "Web" or "e-commerce" job up here. It's like a neutron bomb; the people went away but the buildings stayed.) By contrast, yes, the Valley lost tons of jobs, too, but at least the Valley had, and has, a longtime core of companies that made real products that do real thing dating back to the Fairchild/HP/Intel days. And on the Web side, of course, Google and Yahoo! are leading the charge. They're down there, though, and not up here. Unless and until another bubble develops, I expect San Francisco will remain a remarkably tech jobs-free (but with plenty of finance, retail, and other non tech-related companies) city on the edge of the world's greatest concentration of tech jobs.
I've done a brief survey of the jobs on offer and for your convenience here is a summary of the main qualifications being looked for this time round:
and most importantly:
They're farming out the lower end jobs overseas.
It used to be that a single mom could hop on the IT train and start out as a call center rep, then get trained within as a black box software tester, then a glass box tester (where you get more familiar with code), and then a program (er, design and development) manager.
You can't do that any more.
The kind of jobs they're hiring for now requires the kind of skills only a handfull of the human population can get into.
Web engineering? Product development? Creative and innovation services? That's highly competitive stuff, if everyone takes that as a course in college they're still only going to hire one out of ten: the best of the best. Hire mister second place web engineer or innovator and you are doomed to make a product your competition will eat alive in the marketplace. By nature these jobs can only be done well by the winner in a long line of competitors. Think: ten people and one chair in a game of musical chairs.
There is a lot of talent out there that will no longer be tapped. There are a lot of good workers who will no longer contribute to the tech industry at all because they didn't win the cut throat competition for #1 product designer; people who would be quite good at software bug hunting and even customer support. Someone is still doing those jobs, they will never be obsolete - it's just not us Americans any more.
Steve Levy is right - a lack of diversity in the job force puts you at a far greater risk during a downturn. Oh but if he had any idea how truly right he is.
Here is a clue for everyone. There is not a single job mentioned in that article that cannot be done equally as well overseas for pennies on the US dollar. As time wears on, look to see all those engineering, web engineering, product development, and all creativity related jobs, can be done overseas.
The defenders of offshoring also lie a little bit in this story. They imply that offshoring caused a rise in the number of higher end jobs. That is untrue. Technology caused that. There's nothing here that actually shows that offshoring caused a rise in higher end jobs. Offshoring or not, that was going to happen anyway. Their numbers (the replacement figures) were off, too. NetFlix was said to have 100 customer service jobs in 2000. The implication in the article is that we'd only have 100 cust service jobs in 2005. Hardly. Netflix's customer base has grown dramatically. They would have seen dramatic growth in customer service work if they hadn't, undoubtedly, gone overseas. Well, ladies and gentlemen, all I have to say to that is good luck finding a customer service rep at Netflix who will understand your English. And keep an eye on your credit report too. Whatever country whose data center is now processing your information for Netflix is not within the FBI's jurisdiction. If some goon sells your information offshore, guess what? The FBI will never have any authority to bust that sucker. You have to beg that country to arrest them. Good luck. Hope you like your rental movie.
On the other hand, rumor has it (and I cannot really substantiate this) that companies like DVD Empire outsource their customer support in the US to cheaper areas to cut costs. Again, that is what I heard from a self described employee. I say this is highly ethical.
Another alarming note? The article noted another truth: employers are now looking for Master's and PhD's. Soon you will need a post graduate degree to get into the field. What will you do when the water line moves up to PhD's? What degree is higher than a PhD?
Oh, and I forgot. This article does not mention the not so trivial percentage of lower paid H1B workers hired into silicon valley's work force.
This "solid" article is little more than a cosmic sieve with holes big enough for small moons to sift through...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If you love computer programming, there will generally be a job for you somewhere because you will be decently good at it. (at the least) If you are in it for the money, the games, or the chicks, go get an accounting degree. Programming is more of a calling / obsession than a skill, and I wish I had it. Those with the calling are often extremely valuable and sought after... It just takes a while. If you love what you are studying and love to code and love to build, keep it up. If you just want the money, well, get a finance degree...
And remember, your degree will always be worth more than a philosophy degree. Meditate upon that for a few minutes then go do something useful, like all non-liberal arts majors do.
My little site.
Just in time for the real estate market to collapse, taking most of the economy with it...
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Really? Do the jobs have:
1. Pension benefit
2. Paid vacation
3. Full insurance
Career job? Will it pay off a mortgage? Guaranteed contract?
If not, it's not a real job. Could be hired Monday and unemployed by Thursday. Meaningless.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I don't think I've ever heard the word "recesion"...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Some of the big tech companies here in Silicon Valley are only hiring temps. Others are simply putting up job ads because they're required to, or they're for tax breaks -- if someone actually qualifies, that would just be a bonus.
I got my current job because I know someone. No way I would have gotten this job otherwise. I know this because I was told so by my manager who hired me. I have a lot of experience, but in other areas. Directly experienced candidates (before me and currently) for the same exact job are getting turned away in droves. As far as my job performance goes, I can honestly say that I'm doing about as well as the "experts" I work alongside with, and they're both temps (I am too). All of us are better at our jobs than a permanent employee we have to work with (who barely does anything unless yelled at by our manager).
It's who you know, not what you know. Before my current job, I believed that, at the very least, 'what you know' would count for something... Only if you're a PhD and willing to work for (relatively) peanuts.
I guess Oracle appears to know what you are talking about:
"Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base that's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer."
And Microsoft too, kinda:
"We originally announced pricing of Visual Studio Express at US$49. We are now offering Visual Studio Express for free, as a limited-in-time promotional offer, until November 6, 2006. Note that we are also offering SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as a free download, and that this offer is not limited to the same promotional pricing period as Visual Studio Express."
I guess "Express" is some kind of magic phrase:
"With DB2 Express-C, faculty and students have direct access to an easy to learn and easy to use database for relational and XML data at no charge."
I don't think it's in these vendors' best interests to have such high bars to entry for the worker either.