Slashdot Mirror
Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader writes "Eric Schmidt says what we all suspected: Silicon Valley has largely been immune to the Great Recession. He said, 'Occupy Wall Street isn’t really something that comes up in daily discussion, because their issues are not our daily reality. We live in a bubble, and I don’t mean a tech bubble or a valuation bubble. I mean a bubble as in our own little world.... Companies can’t hire people fast enough. Young people can work hard and make a fortune. Homes hold their value.'"
Silicon Valley and other islands of technology define their economic model by success in the marketplace, not by the manipulations of ivy league finance wizards.
Homes over a million hold their value
Companies can't offshore fast enough
Young people can work hard and be fooled into thinking that they will make a fortune.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
That's what i have been telling my colleagues (all of them are in i.t., or i.t. companies) whenever the issues occupy wall street is raising came up. Almost all of them have been saying 'i have worked "hard" and made myself. everyone can' - because they are living in a bubble. Their skill set and aptitude, matches the time period they are living in. We are living in an era where skills/inclinations that i.t. requires are in high demand, and therefore we are in luck. Had we lived in an earlier era, we would be hard pressed to make a living.
And no - dont ever fall into the pit of thinking that 'because i am smart, i could make it' -> it does not work that way. Talent/inclination works differently than 'smart'. Cognitive powers does not have direct relevance to the inclinations you have - there are a lot of smart people, scientists too, who find i.t. work quite stressing, irritating and unbearable. and vice versa.
So we are lucky. if we had been born back in 15th century, we would be shining a feudal lord's shoes maybe. with all our smarts, but without anything on that time and age to support our particular talents.
Same the situation with majority of people - things that were in huge demand 50 years ago, are not in demand today. Things were inconceivable 50 years ago, are in demand today. But, dont err in thinking that 'adaptation is necessary' -> it is always this way - in a society with ills of capitalism, there is always huge demand for a very little percentage of talents, and the demand for the rest is never enough to feed the population.
And in this environment, those who 'made it' because they were lucky tend to think that they made it because of their 'talents'. Nay. you were lucky to hit your mother's womb in the perfect time.
It is utterly stupid to live in bubbles, devoid of perception of reality, and then to apply one's own bubble to reality, and be content with it. middle class today (which is a pathetic 10% in usa as of this moment btw) does that. and they are no different in position than the clerks, guards who did the feudal lord's bidding back in middle ages, for slightly elevated comforts.
Read radical news here
These people don't understand that their cushy lives and jobs depend on a strong US economy. Even if you aren't seeing the effects of it yet, it will still impact you eventually through soaring costs. We're all in it together.
In short, what Schmidt saw is the continued success of Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, and biotech companies. As a result, these companies literally held up the economy of the Bay Area, and probably prevented a major cratering of the housing market that continues to plague much of the rest of California. Small wonder why the Occupy movement in the Bay Area (in my opinion!) didn't take long become a MAJOR annoyance, and in the end the Occupy encampments in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley were swept away.
In a slightly lesser fashion, the same is happening to the Seattle, WA metroplex, too. The continued success of Amazon.com, Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks has literally held up the economy of that area.
A "Web 2.0 Depression" is just around the corner. When it hits, it's going to hit The Valley hard.
It's going to start with average people realizing the dangers of social media. They're going to realize how sharing a lot of very personal information in a very public setting is not a good idea. They'll leave sites like Facebook and Twitter in droves, in a very short period of time. Don't believe me? Look at how quickly many other prominent social media sites have lost a lot of visitors very quickly. MySpace and Digg are two classic examples.
Even more community-oriented sites like reddit, and even Slashdot (which almost pre-dates the "Web 1.0" bubble), aren't immune. Longtime Slashdot readers will know what I mean. When it comes to reddit, people are getting tired of the fads and the very lame discussion. It has only gotten worse with some subreddits banning and censoring users who have original or "non-subredit-mainstream" views.
Once people stop visiting these sites, the demand for hardware and software will plummet. It'll cascade out far beyond those core social media companies, of course. If people aren't using social media sites, then they also won't be using third-party software for interfacing with social media sites. This will put software developers out of work. If people aren't using social media sites, then other companies won't have any reason to interact with people there. This will put marketers out of work.
The hype has already worn off of popular Web 2.0 software like Ruby on Rails, and the NoSQL movement is collapsing. People and businesses are quickly realizing that both were a very bad idea. Java and .NET are much better platforms for building reliable software for the long term, and NoSQL is just what happens when people don't know how to properly use relational databases. Frequent and unexpected data loss and data inconsistency has been one of the biggest nails in the NoSQL coffin, but that's exactly what should be expected from shoddy technology. The death of cloud computing is just around the corner, given its ties to these technologies.
Going beyond the software, it'll also impact hardware manufacturers. They won't need to sell as many servers. But the biggest losers will be those producing mobile devices. If consumers aren't using social media sites, then they'll have little need for smart phones with all sorts of social media software and other crap built in. They'll likely start opting for simpler devices that are cheaper, even if less capable.
The Valley may think that they're immune now, but when the Web 2.0 Depression hits, it's going to hit them damn hard. They've put too many of their eggs in this one basket, and this basket is about to be thrown to the ground and destroyed, along with everything (and everyone!) in it. The economy will show them no mercy.
I'm one of the unemployed (older and seasoned, yet not able to find interviews or jobs in my field). to folks like me, we are *very* much in tune with the occupy movement. we're not at work being flooded with 'work harder, harder; longer, longer!' messages. we're not caught up IN the bubble, we're outside the bubble. we see what its like on both sides.
you don't.
that's what makes all the difference. I've been employed for about 3 decades (in the software field) and I've paid more dues than eric, in my time. he's attained a more powerful position but he knows far less about life than me - of that, I'm very sure. I can tell. anyone my age and with just my simple travels, can.
I'm currently 'over there' in the not-working group (or should I say, not-employed; I'm actually working quite a lot, in fact). I don't think it will stay that way for a long time, but I've been here longer than I thought. its a bit scary and I can see the corporate greed that is caustic to employees. everyone is there 'at the pleasure of the king', pretty much. I see that. the occupy guys see that.
maybe he really does get it but he also realizes that people at his level have to sing the same song. its possible. hard to tell if he believes his own bullshit or not. some do, some don't.
at any rate, many of the folks I know (techies who are also out of work and mostly of middle age or higher) are *strongly* aware and in support of the occupy movement. I'm right smack in the middle of silicon valley, not even very far from the google campus. I remember when it was the SGI campus, too (and I worked at SGI back in those days; before there was a google). I feel I have a good handle on the bay area and silicon valley. and I can say, he's full of shit.
"occupy" *should* really hit home with bay area workers. especially the knowledge-based workers; ones that can so easily be replaced and outsourced. the fact that we are not unionized and that we are a 'commodity' puts us at extreme risk of being fired for any reason and at any time. you've seen the downsizing in front of your own eyes. you can't deny that, can you? are *all* those guys really poor performers? do you believe that?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Immigrants from other company often come here with the same attitude.
This is why you see neither at an "Occupy" rally. Actually, though I live 30 minutes from Boston, and just got layed-off, I have not attended any rallies, and instead, put my time and efforts into finding a new job. And guess what - my efforts have paid-off and been rewarded - well. (And yes, I work in high-tech).
So I believe my sentiment is similar to those in Silicon Valley. Sure, Washington is broken, and sure, Wall St. is broken. But people at these rallies are really giving off the affect of just looking for a hand-out. If the actual reality or "demands" are any different - they've completely failed to make this clear - even to me - who listens to the most liberal of the liberal media.
I call BS on that. They don't hold their value, but families hold onto them because of the tax advantages which cripple state and local funding, all due to a public vote decades ago.
This causes the supply of homes to be restricted and what homes are sold to become overvalued, and numerous other market distortions.
We need a free market for taxes too.
Homes hold their value.
I was told by a low-level IT manager that San Francisco and Palo Alto are one of the most expensive cities to have a house. He said she paid over a million for a modest house in Palo Alto.
So, what exactly I'm missing? Either they hold their value really high (saying they have an unaffordable price is weird), this manager's statement is overrated, Palo Alto/San Francisco aren't part of SV, Eric Schmidt is not entirely correct or all of the above.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Do they need chemists? I'd love to go back to work for a reasonable wage. I'd even move to California. Oh yea, I can code a bit.
I am fifty years old and can Not get a job interview, one look at me and HR slams the door...
I have the skill set to do any of the needed I.T. work, in the vast majority of local businesses, BUT I AM NOT 24 and fresh out of school, therefore I am not even worth an interview.
I am seriously looking at going to the darkside of I.T. and making lots of money from Gangsters, the only thing preventing me is I have some morals left, but with winter heating bills I am not sure how much longer I can hold out.
There is no occupy Oakland or anything like that and certainly no valuation in any IPOs for web 2.0 companies. Absolutely none! Not even yachts off international waters with cheap Indians to lower wages
http://saveie6.com/
Whatever their issues were. Engineers are good at defining and solving problems. "Occupy" failed to define a problem.
These people don't understand that their cushy lives and jobs depend on a strong US economy. Even if you aren't seeing the effects of it yet, it will still impact you eventually through soaring costs. We're all in it together.
I think you meant to include the word "should" in there because that's how it should work. However, I might point out that if the government determines you're "too big to fail" then you have a safety net and you can screw up your company as badly as you want. Now, if you're lobbying congress and providing them with tons of soft money, you might just be "too big to fail." Congress might artificially keep their bubble protected by turning briefly to Communism where they buy out and then own parts of the failing companies. And, like Communism, you'll have the citizens in the more sparsely populated parts of the nation suffering to keep the overly populated cities looking like pristine islands (see Moscow through the Cold War).
Google (and the rest of the tech giants) have been dodging taxes and I hope that when those Oakland OWS demonstrations spill over into Mountain View that the police don't have enough tax money to keep drenching the protesters.
My work here is dung.
The only reason there's been Occupy stuff here is because it's the political hub of the country. DC, thanks also to being home of the government, has mostly weathered the recession without too much additional strife. Homes have retained value (I still can't afford one), jobs are still available, and due to the government turnover and many colleges in the area, there's a constant turnover in the population.
Silicon Valley has done well through the recession for three obvious reasons:
1) They actually produce something that the rest of the world wants. We seem to have forgotten, as a culture, that someone has to actually make things; a service economy only works if you have someone to serve... Which leads into:
2) The bankers, the realtors, the assorted "middle men" of Silicon Valley provide actual services to those bringing in the money. They haven't (yet) replaced the doers as Silicon Valley's raison d'etre. The world needs bankers - The bankers just need to remember that real people need them to provide real money so they can buy real things, rather than bundling together unicorn farts and leprechaun gold and hoping to get-rich-quick selling it as an "investment" to morons who only see dollar signs.
3) No slackers allowed - The usual parasites in any community get about as much sympathy from geeks as they would from Hitler. 'Nuff said.
...more likely to attract the ire of young people and Occupy movement.
All supported by over charging the customer.
and furthermore, 'getting rich' by 'hard work' is the biggest piece of fraud that is perpetrated by current system. can you think that someone who is owning majority or even noticeable share on a megacorporation, got rich through 'hard work' ?
now, if you redefine hard work to be 'making others work and taking the fruits of labor to 90% percentage', then it becomes possible. but then again, in the last 50 years that has also been circumvented - those who are owning the means are making a tiny minority (mostly from middle class) work for them to make others work for them, and reaping the profits. in short, we send our sons, daughters to business colleges to get high degrees and be high level managers, even executives to make all the people work for the sake of a minority owner percentage. no different than the peasants sending their sons to be lord's soldiers, or tax collectors.
Read radical news here
How many communities with nothing but rich people have Occupy protests?
Companies canâ(TM)t hire people fast enough.
Look at the IT Market in NYC. Why haven't the recruiters combed through the Occupy camps for manpower? I guess hobos don't make great programming/administration talent.
Have gnu, will travel.
They made us think they valued us for our intelligence and skills. But no, they valued us for our youth. Of course, we *also* needed intelligence and skills, but before any of that was even a consideration we needed to be young.
As wrong as this is, the people you harm by turning to crime will not be the same people who prefer to hire kids over hiring you. And sooner or later you will get caught.
If you are a rational self-interested actor, you will change careers. It sucks. You will have to spend the rest of your life doing something boring and tedious, for which you are grossly overqualified, and which doesn't pay you a tenth of what your skills would be worth in the body of a younger man. But it is better than starvation, and it is better than prison.
You people are unfucking believable.
Everything is the fault of someone else. No one is fair to you. They were just lucky.
Your endless excuses why your life ended up being a sorry excuse for existence is fascinating.
I can only assume you are some stupid, fucking college student still living at home because you selected a degree in Philosophy or Women's studies and are bitter now that you can't find a job.
Fuck your whining. Fuck you pessimism. Fuck you.
I am seriously looking at going to the darkside of I.T. and making lots of money from Gangsters
No, working for Apple isn't the answer.
hide your hobbitses
..which is the bubble schmidt is talking about. in his social bubble there doesn't exist any unemployment - probably because if you're in that bubble and you're unemployed you already have loads of cash - if you don't, you disappear from that bubble. his comment is hilariously disconnected from general populace - which is even more hilarious because he works in a company which is supposed to be on top of information from(and to) general populace.
I mean, if he doesn't discuss what's happening 45 minutes from his backyard, the occupy movement should actually have started their movement from googles lawn - not from wall street.
sure, at wall street they speculate with googles stock. but at googles offices they speculate on how to dodge taxes and what things to sponsor to turn the attention away form that - and that's a global thing, they dodge taxes from everywhere.
the article itself mentions that on usa's average, the general area isn't doing that well even. it stops just short of saying that schmidt's circle is just full of shit.
tech companies and silicon valley itself would be much more better off if there weren't a recession anyhow, it's just that google is still in an upturn.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Everyone in Silicon Valley who wants to take part in the Occupy movement just goes to San Francisco and Oakland. They're not part of Silicon Valley proper, but they're still part of the Bay Area. I think the difference is that entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are part of the 99%
No, I will not work for your startup
When the Occupy movement started, I had great hope, because they raised some key issues with society:
But they've dissolved into a bunch of fantasies about ending the FED, overthrowing the government, and all the usual pie-in-the-sky bullshit that every other such "movement" has fallen prey to for decades. Even the hippies with their successful anti-war protests were distracted by fantasies of "peace and love" and dreams of changing society itself. Times change, but people don't. I doubt we'll ever see the altruistic ideals of Star Trek where people "work" to keep themselves entertained and educated for the good of society, because their essential needs are taken care of without the need to labour for those fruits.
I admit I have become quite bitter about the way I have been treated, and I have tried to keep a civil outlook, but it gets harder every day.
I live in a small community that has been hit hard in ways that no one will admit to by the "down Turn" . the local newspaper just had a special issue just for foreclosures--- nothing but a list of foreclosure proceedings-- for a county with 50,000 residents. and a second for tax hearings-- six pages of single spaced names and property ID numbers in two columns.
There are no other careers, people are abandoning their homes and BUSINESSES, for a chance at a new life somewhere else.
I have been to the west coast, 9 months looking for work, and could only get a job at a mom and pop computer repair shop --- wages $10.00hr--- I lived in a 6 foot by eight foot room for months with no hot water and no prospects for any improvement. So I came home to my pissed off wife and a home in foreclosure.
I just do not have any other choice.
I'm over 60 and still working in software. My trick is to never leave home, never let them meet me face to face - the opposite of what you did. I work as a contractor by telecommute, etc. Never bring up the issue of your age. Find an excellent sales person with an existing customer base to come up with ideas and projects, that's been a very good way to go. This is a very interesting time to be in software.
"Let them eat cake, 2.0."
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Goldman Sachs have already made their money selling Facebook funds. Then comes the IPO with shooting star valuations for the upper management & VCs. Then the plunge to earth for the bag holders.
More typically known as pump & dump. This is what Silicon Valley is all about.
Deleted
If you read the article, the point is that only Eric Schmitd thinks OWS skipped Silicon Valley, and that's he's most likely wrong. He's also part of the 1%, so of course he doesn't see it. The article also points out that his inability to hire qualified people is because they don't consider older workers to be qualified.
they will
Young people (most of Google's employees) think they are indestructible.
I daresay that I am in better financial shape than 80% of Mr Schmidt's employees including those my age and I fully expect to keep innovating and being paid well for it until I am in my 60s and due to retire.
I cannot be certain that I will be OK financially at that point.
* Medicare may be a shadow if what it was
* The social security I paid into on the majority of my income for the last several decades (while the "investor class" paid on little of their income) may be gone
* The major corporations that committed to a pension may have shoveled the liability onto a disposable successor
* Medical insurance may become unattainable
* I could get disabled by the negligent act of a corporation with little or no compensation (Tort "reform") and get wiped out financially
It is time to realize that us 99%-ers are really in this together even if most of us are too busy working to join the protests.
There is no unionization of technical talent. IMHO, they figured out early on that they could make a boatload of money without some middlemen A) telling them that they're being treated like crap and B) if they only paid them money they would have a better standard of living.
That being said, I'm sure there are plenty of programmers out there who would dearly love a residual payment every time a piece of software they wrote was used just like Hollywood and music industry talent gets. Of course, that goes against the early hacker ethic which was to take fascist/totalitarian control of computing hardware away from the high priests in lab coats and give it to the masses.
There's NO poor left in Silicon Valley to protest. They all been driven out of the area by insane real estate and rents there
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
Outside a few choice outlets, OWS is a non-story. For all their vaunted strength, if you took every OWS who protested everywhere, it wouldn't come up to the size of a single Tea Party, or even Van Halen concert.
The people protesting are the offspring of upper middle class people who are finding out that they were dumb pieces of shit who got worthless degrees and actually went into debt for it and then are mad at everybody but themselves.
They call themselves the 99%? What a laugh. They are the 1%. The 1% who won't work hard, who think they are entitled to stuff simply because they occupy space on this earth.
They are disgusting, they destroy things, they assault women, they literally shit where ever they need, much like a wild animal.
They feel they have the right to do whatever they want whenever they want and whine about oppression when they find out that their choices have choices that limit them for the rest of the choices.
They're the kind of people who literally make you want to upchuck when you look at them. They're disgusting on a physical and intellectual level.
The only reason they get press from the left is because they're effectively a sock puppet for the DNC and the SEIU. They're sickening.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
its not 'pessimism'. its statistics. and yes, everything is the fault of someone else. namely, the 5% top of the population who has 72% in total of income and assets - including wealth generation tools. the rest ? 85% bottom of society (almost everyone, you see) get only 15% from income and wealth in total.
yes indeed. its really the fault of someone else in this situation. in a dog eat dog world, you end up with one big fat dog. we are just 2-3 steps away from that. now we are at the 'a few big fat dogs' stage.
i would like to remind you that, if i had had been a college student who has chosen philosophy or women's studies and therefore i was unemployed, that would not justify your arguments.
because, anyone who is dare able to say 'philosophy is not needed', deserves a sound kick in the face. the current capitalist mechanic of corporate exploitation not needing something to make immediate profits in short term, does not mean that that something is not needed.
Read radical news here
the tenure of the article is much different from the title. The Author is actually refuting what Eric Schmidt is saying. The recession DID hit Silicon valley. Maybe not Google or Apple, but I know people that saw their salary cut by a good margin and houses devaluate in San Jose by around 20-30% in 2007/2008. Sure, it's not the all-out crash, but on a 1 million $ house, that's still 200-300k. And that's for those who were lucky to still be employed. It's not because of a recession that some people and companies can't thrive (plunging stock markets are a candy store for short sellers). My company (senior software developer speaking) had a record-breaking year in 2011 for example. But I'm sure that's not the norm.
And let's not forget Madison, Wisconsin, where we combine technology with healthcare for some major recession-proofing.
By "rich" he means you might be able to afford to buy a house that isn't an hour away from where you will still need to report to work. If that happens, rest assured the founders of your company will be able to afford a football team.
The saying goes that "If you work hard you will get ahead in the world". That statement was mostly untrue foe a long time. Yes, there were notable exceptions to that (Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie etc.) but for most people, this just was not true. Actually, luck played a big part in those successes.
Recently, the ruling class (the 1%) has forgot the last part of that saying, they want it to be "Work hard and maybe you will be lucky to hold on to your job". They got to their exulted positions just like the nobility of history did, they were lucky to be born to a rich and powerful family. Hard work seldom is the key to their success, they inherited it. All I am calling for is to put the full saying back into effect. If those at the top don't work hard and try to rest on the accomplishments of their elders, they should slip into poverty If a poor person does work hard, he should be able to take their place at the top of the heap..
please read the book 'blood on the street'.
the internet bubble of the late 90s was directly involved with the 'ivy league finance wizards'. netscape, aol, and the rest were all linked at the hip.
if you understand it from that perspective, then take another look at the behavior of the slashdot heroes.
torvalds sold stock in a company he knew was probably not worth its valuation. why? because he worked there.
normal people call that 'insider trading', but not in the go-go 90s. the suits from wall street made big money, and the techies were in love with them, and vice versa.
you know, people who ACTUALLY "Make" things... as in take a display and stick it onto a motherboard... are they doing well too? because, after all, by your logic, people who 'make things' do well?
This is a liberal district. Just look at who it elects. We all gravitated to the OWS in the East Bay because we were too busy to set one up here, releasing products for people to use when documenting abuse at the hands of riot police. Nyaah.
is that you might actually be naive enough to believe that load of crap. The regulations are there because morally bankrupt people and the companies who are run by them have no qualms about poisoning and even killing you if it helps their bottom line. your impotent little small businesses don't even enter into the equation. Assuming tat they aren't also interested in lining their own pockets at your expense in order to some day be one of the big guys.
See Dell Computers
A decade ago, I had a Chinese coworker whose parents lived in Shanghai. They were on the upside of their housing bubble back then, and the general belief was that land and houses were the only things you could invest in that really held their value. They didn't have much of a stock market of their own, there was a lot of new money around, and the population's still growing and moving to the big cities, and as they guy said about land, "They ain't making any more of that stuff". By now, they're starting to slump, but the prices are so high it's cheaper to buy in the US.
Same sort of thing happened with Japanese investors in Hawaii in the 80s-90s, as they were going through their bubble years back home.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Housing prices holding their value? Here? What's he smoking?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
the raping of great companies through the blindness of their absentee owners is just one of those disasters that takes a while to play out
Curiously, when thinking about companies that don't value their brand, I started thinking of one that does and is also rewarded handsomely for it: Apple.
With them being the exception to that rule (a quality one could arguably describe to Jobs' iron fist and intense RDF), do you think that something like that can be maintained by any CEO, such as Cook, or does it really take a truly unique personality to do that for a company and its brand(s)?
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
are all in India. The news hasn't reached them there yet.
Maybe people in Silicon Valley are smart enough not to waste their lives camping out in public plazas while those they are trying to reach ignore them. Seriously folks. If you want to improve your own life, go and actually get a job, get more education if you need it, and then go out and make a difference in your own life and the lives of others. You don't need anybody's permission to do that. I thought that's what the whole "American Dream" was all about.
Yeah it is. They pay twice as much and are so flush with cash that they spend like crazy to try and improve (at least in iOS). Much better than budget cuts, no raises and working on products that suck.
you need plenty of permission to get a college degree though. they won't just go an educated anyone. you need the right connections and background.
I loved taking some of the demands apart, piece by piece.
your commentary was neither accurate nor thorough. for that matter, it wasn't even topical. you took parts of statements from one person and projected them as the demands of an entire group of people. all you showed is that you have no idea what the occupy movement is actually about. what you did is as sensible as reading a book from glenn beck and then proclaiming that you understand what every republican - including your own dear lord and savior ron paul - believe in.
What? I work at NVIDIA. I'm pretty sure we're in Silicon Valley.
I love seeing all these different views on slashdot from hobbyist economists.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Just young people??? Can't us hard working old people make a fortune too?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Will Apple collapse now that Steve Jobs died?
Apple collapsed before, during the Sculley period.
I live here in Silicon Valley. True, people are still trying to buy houses, but the homes of friends are under water.
This is despite the 12% inflation rate (shadowstats.com -- measured the way the CPI originally did when it was still amateurish in its hiding of the real rate of inflation).
12% inflation and our gov says 2 - 3 % and 2+% economic growth.
SV is indeed in a bubble, but there are still lots of good tech people out of work.
n/t
I remember the days when revolutionary products poured out of Silicon Valley (and perhaps not coincidentally P.C. Magazine was 600 pages long).
I realize that PCs are now commodity products, but it nevertheless remains true that not much has been heard from SV since the dot-com crash.
Does SV still innovate, or does it now exist merely to upgrade existing products?
Please explain.
Just Google for 'Crash Course' and invest 3 hours of your time.
You will realise that the world economy is fucked and no amount of buying Windows 8 and iPad3 etc is going to help.
This is really really serious.
Just do that one thing while you have some spare time over the holidays and a lot of things will become clear.
The biggest joke is that these 'occupy' people all use Facebook to protest Goldman Sachs, a company with a major investment in.....Facebook.
That the Occupiers are largely hipster douche bags who love their iSwag...
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
directly involved with the financial disaster of 2007 - 2008. Its that easy. OWS is a reaction to those sectors and players directly involved with the real estate bubble and the sub-prime mortgage mis-deeds of big banks - and Wall St. Technology served to make all that possible but it was greed - corruption - and politics that made the disaster. Those are the areas that OWS has (or will) focus on along with the business as usual (no CEOs or senior management go to jail -- but rather get bonuses) environment in DC and Wall St.
People are fed up - and I am one of them.
Its not the years, its the mileage
Both me and my wife are working in senior tech positions full time, yet we are struggling to pay for preschool of two kids. (Town)house/insurance/other basic expanses just add up. Yet we count ourselves lucky compared to people who came to this country legally 10 years ago, married, had kids, bought a house and are still not able to get permanent residence and are effectively indentured servants of their current employers.
What we are really lacking is skills to organize across company/nationality/religion lines. People in technology are generally smart, affluent, experienced in selling their ideas and in direct control of information presented to an average citizen. If we ever had organized willpower... woah!
occupy?
please.
will someone just nuke k-street already and clean this mess up for good.
camping out downtown won't change anything while special interests are in your representatives' back pockets.
here's something every american should agree on:
- put a cap on campaign spending
- make lobbying a capital offence (treason)
then we can start having a meaningful discussion about what we want our representatives to do for us. until then it's all just noise.
So what you're saying is that he should open up shill offices in Ireland and The Netherlands, declare himself an S-corporation and then charge his employer as a company to funnel those revenues through those two countries so he can get a 2.4% tax rate? And you're implying that's what he does?
You sir, are an idiot!
Techies are not completely out of the Occupy Movement. Robonaut 1 is occupying the International Space Station in a effort to obtain personhood for his kind. He is currently camped out in a storage area on the ISS but without power or communication links Robonaut has been completely ignored by the media.
It has been suggested that we techies start a movement to incorporate Robonaut 1 and thereby make it a person in the same sense that all corporations are persons. The present situation where corporations are persons but robots and AI are not is clearly unfair.
The Personhood for Robnaut movement farther wished to nominate Watson as Robanaut's CEO.
Tom Riley TomRiley@woodwaredesigns.com http://woodwaredesigns.com/woodware.html
yeah, I remember when Google offloaded its IPO shares at, what, $80 a share!! Boy do I feel sorry for anyone who was left holding that bag.
Facebook obviously has even less it could possibly do with any money raised than Google did, since Facebook is a site many users don't leave all day.
OWS didn't skip Silicon Valley. They had a wonderful time congregating in Oakland and in San Francisco. I remember seeing something on the news about people being upset about the use of force...? As for those here that say that Silicon Valley is immune to the meddling of Wall Street and financial types, I suggest you look at the source of your income and the source of the money your company uses to pay your salary. There are lots of Wall Street types in your little valley. There's lots of money coming into and controlling your lives in the form of IPOs and venture funding. No business is isolated from the capital markets and the affect of the market place. Tech is just one of several industries on the fun part of the curve right now. Extract your head from the brown orifice and look around at the world and (as the Joker said before putting a bullet in Eckhart), "think about the future". Merry Christmas
You're forgetting that the jailbreaks themselves are security breaches. Remember the jailbreaks that all you had to do was visit a webpage? That's a root-level exploit just from visiting a webpage. That's a HUGE security breach.
It's hard to accept predictions without supporting evidence. While you might have predicted successfully there were many other voices out there other than yours. If nobody believes you they can't benefit from your insight. That's the point I'm trying to make, unless you have a way to sort the crap predictions from the gems your reflection on your past predictions that came true are worthless. (as in they did not provide anyone with value)
There is nothing more to discuss if your primary objective is to lurk about playing "I told you so".
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Google's P/E is about 20. i.e. A bit on the high side, but they do actually have an income. Cut Googles price in half to be worth investing in. Facebook's P/E is estimated to be about 125; It'd take 125 years to earn the value of the shares from their earnings. Think 8 billion on the high side for Facebook as it stands. i.e. a drop of about 80%.
Deleted