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Unemployment Hits New High In Silicon Valley
Though there may be some degree of cushion for IT workers in the US generally, Slatterz writes "The steadily climbing unemployment rate in Silicon Valley has reached a shocking four-year high
of 6.6 per cent. Recent statistics indicate that the percentage of unemployed workers in the sunny state of California has increased to 7.7 in August — up from 7.4 per cent in July. Jeffrey Lindsay of Bernstein Research explained that a number of Internet firms were chronically overstaffed."
How many people have become unemployed and then taken a job at 2/3 of the salary? How many people would like to be employed but not registered as unemployed (e.g. wife/husband still has job)?
How many people put up with crap they'd normally resign over, because of the state of the jobs market. In my experience when unemployment is over 4 or 5% this affects 10 to 15% of the employed too.
Will Rogers famously said some time in the 1930s during the Great Depression, "A recession is when you neighbor's out of work. A depression is when you're out of work!"
To all of you in Silicon Valley: I hope it's just a recession.
Free Martian Whores!
good point, quality is pretty high there.
I don't know why I rated an 'offtopic', I'm deadly serious. The weather is better, cost of life is much lower and there is plenty of opportunity to be employed in the IT field, especially as go-between.
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The weather is better
That one is arguable, depending on personal preference and depending which Indian city we are talking about ... four straight months of 38C with 90% humidity isn't everybody's idea of fun.
And there are other lifestyle challenges in India that are not to be entered into lightly by the average westerner.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
This is an interesting problem that I've seen repeated almost every place I've been (caveat: I'm a contractor). Businesses often take the approach that if IT's broken, it must be due to a lack of staffing either in skills or numbers. In reality, often IT is broken due to a lack of decision making prowess in upper management. IT is treated as a toy box and milestones and scope are like melting jell-o in terms of their definition and stability. Not getting the result you personally want out of IT? No problem, hire the next guy through the door that talks a good talk. In the end, IT is the one area that suffers the greatest harm due to 'too many cooks in the kitchen' and as such, 'this'. I hate to say it, but IT needs to bleed a little bit if order is to return.
Your average C++ programmer from the non-embedded world will likely be missing a set of skills that are necessary for a lot of embedded work. For example, do they know how to use a oscilloscope? A logic analyzer? A voltmeter? Arbitrary waveform generator? Emulators? Protocol analyzer? Are they used to working on devices that might only have a few K of RAM or even ROM? They could be a good fit if you need someone working on application level stuff, rather than bringing up the low level hardware. It all depends on exactly what the work involves and if the company is willing to allow someone to learn as they go, or if they need someone to hit the ground running.
Let us ask other questions.
yes, lets
How many are too afraid to take on a new job because they feel they might not measure up?
How many do not have the financial means to get training to get that jobs? have you seen those cisco training courses? bat crazy money
I would like to ask you what makes you think that *everybody* can work like that? or should work like that? what kind of attitude is that towards the 40-hour week? there was blood on the streets to win those 40 hours and now you're implying that we should go back to working day and night? I thought i worked to make a living, and not the other way around.
How many are too lazy to learn new skills because it might be hard, get in the way of WOW, or posting on boards?
How many are not willing to put in to learn new skills because they'd rather put their time towards raising their children or going out on a date or staying home with their girlfriend and oiling her hair/giving her a backrub?
maybe not everybody is lazy
Guess what, those working only 40 hours a day won't get anywhere.
not everybody has the same physical/psychological strength to work those hours. and by work i mean both make a living and learn something new. if you can do it, more kudos to you. why are you berating those who cannot? or will not? why are you creating a hypothetical social/work scale where everybody has to measure the size of their dick compared to yours?
furthermore, where are we supposed to go? wtf? is there a "destination" planned? cuz i didn't get the memo.
There are a lot of jobs out there. If you go through life in your 9 to 5 relying on things never changing you will get stung. When the job you had is lost it can be blamed on the economy many times, however not being able to get a new one rest on yourself more than not.
the idea of changing 4801840938 jobs in a lifetime may not be comforting to everybody for reasons of personal priorities and/or preference. i hate looking for a new job. it's draining me, psychologically. Life is not a dick measuring competition, again.
It's only in Western Capitalism that the idea of financial insecurity and instability pushing people into staying with there jobs
insert marxist rant here, but still, please get off your high horse. not everybody subscribes to the protestant ethic
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There's a good reason.
Recruiters ask for impossible qualifications, such as 10 years experience with some technology that has only been around for eight, plus five years of experience in some completely unrelated product that not many people use, anyway. The set of people who have even used both products is vanishingly small, and the people who have the required years of experience simply do not exist.
So the only people who respond to the job advert are incompetent liars. Recruiters bring the liars to you, and you realize they are fools. So the recruiters decide to UP the requirements for the position to try to filter out the fools. Of course, this just makes it WORSE as they list even more impossible qualifications.
If you want to hire competent people, don't make impossible skills and unlikely experience combinations a requirement.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Well put!
If you choose not to subscribe to a particular work ethic (or any 'ethic', for that matter), good for you... but be prepared for the consequences.
I didn't like my job, and realized it would go nowhere, so I went back to school and got a new degree in a new field. I then shucked my high-paying job for an entry-level software engineering position... and worked my way back up.
I took the consequences. I worked the long hours with school. It was my choice.
If you choose not to do that, that's fine. If you want to spend your time rearing children (or whatever) instead of learning new skills, more power to you. Just be prepared to accept consequences.
For the overwhelming majority of people, life is about a series of compromises. What is so wrong with that?
You may be a troll, but I'll reply anyway.
My dad was a workaholic and he went "far" in his job, moving up the ranks and earning a six figure salary. How did he achieve it? He spent his nights at home writing memos and reports. He was never more than an arm's length away from a laptop with his email client up. His cell phone was ringing constantly--dinner, nights, family time, no event was so important that he had to turn off the cell phone. He would have been a hero in your eyes.
What was the result, however? He became grossly overweight, sick often, irritable, and in the end he ran off with some tart who was apparently okay with his lifestyle (or perhaps it was his money).
I'm not writing this to complain about bad fortune or whatever (I'm doing fine currently), I'm just writing this to show why I'm going to be lazy, at least according to your definition (working 40hrs a week). Like hell I'm going to work myself to death simply to enrich my employers.
In fact, I've been researching inexpensive housing and increasing living efficiency so that I can thrive when unemployed or on a low salary. I prefer living simple and happy to living large and depressed.