Slashdot Mirror
Tech Jobs Are Replacing Tech Jobs in Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader writes: More than 22% of the jobs in Silicon Valley are now in the technology sector, reports the San Jose Mercury News, while the area has lost nearly 156,000 factory jobs over the last 15 years. But 59% of those lost manufacturing jobs were at tech companies, indicating that "the hardware has faded in importance compared with the software," says economist Christopher Thornberg. "It's all about the applications these days." Over the last 15 years employment gains happened in "information" areas characterized as mobile/internet/social media as well as software and tech services -- for example, at companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Salesforce -- and at hotels and restaurants catering to high-tech workers. "It's not just that tech is replacing other industries," reports the San Jose Mercury News. "Tech is replacing itself."
Shouldn't manufacturing be in the title?
It's just being built in China now; cheaper labor, fewer environmental regulations. (Obviously)
You should replace the person with the tech job of writing headlines with a new person with the tech job of writing headlines.
One interesting thing we're now seeing is how a lot of software is getting worse. This includes not only commercial software like Windows 8 (and 10, to some extent), but also a lot of open source software. Firefox, GNOME 3, systemd and the Slashdot Beta site are good examples of how inferior software is being forced on users, without any benefit in quality, price, capability, or any other traditional metric.
Something else that's interesting about this situation is how it is being driven by hipsters/Millennials. In the past, technical changes would have to be backed up with a strong technical argument. A change just wouldn't happen if it didn't bring some important benefit to the users. But hipsters/Millennials have taken a different approach. They tend to ram through changes, "justifying" the changes by pretty much just telling the users that they are "wrong" when they object to such changes because such changes don't bring any benefit.
Firefox is perhaps the best example of unwanted changes being forced upon unwilling users. Nearly every release of Firefox features some unnecessary UI change that reduces its usability, or the removal of useful configuration options, or the addition of unwanted functionality (like Pocket and Hello), or even the inclusion of ads that are built into the browser itself. Now we're hearing that Firefox will be switching to a Chrome-like extension model, which will no doubt break many existing extensions. When the users of Firefox scream in pain, "No! We do not want these changes!", the Firefox developers ignore their pleas and force the changes on the few remaining Firefox users anyway. After being treated so poorly, we've seen many Firefox users flee to alternate browsers, leaving Firefox with only about 7% of the market.
All of this is contrary to what we'd expect to be seeing, and what we in fact did see for many years. From the advent of computing up until around 2005, when hipsters/Millennials started getting involved with industry, we did see continual improvement. Software would get better as it aged, as is developers learned more about what users actually needed, and what techniques worked best. Then the hipsters/Millennials came along, chose to ignore all of this accumulated knowledge, and in just a few short years they have trashed so much software and ruined the experience for so many users.
We can only hope that the generation that comes after the hipsters/Millennials will be able to undo all of the damage the hipsters/Millennials have caused. This is unfortunate, because instead of this subsequent generation being able to improve things, they will just waste their effort bringing us back to where we were in 2005. So not only do we have to contend with the wasted generation that the hipsters/Millennials are responsible for, we'll also have to contend with the waste they forced on the next generation(s)! The saddest part is that it's all so unnecessary.
Back when every new tech gadget was an actual gadget, a company might need say 3-4 hardware guys
and 4-5 software guys to design it, plus of course a facility somewhere to build and test it.
Now that everything runs off the same phone, Apple might need 10000 hardware engineers or whatever to design each new phone, but that supports an ecosystem for a million software devopers. And at that volume they are manufactured overseas.
Of course jobs are skewing toward software.
That's what I like being an old school EE doing RF/Microwave hardware. It's still high tech, but a slower pace. Things don't change for the sake of change, rather when you can improve upon something using quantative measurements.
I've been working as a contractor in industrial automation for the past 15 years; not in Silicon Valley, though. Purely based on personal experience by working daily on the production floor of a manufacturing plant (machines are developed, constructed and implemented in situ), I'd say that few people have been replaced by the technology that we create. Some people have retired and have not been replaced, some people have been let go, some job descriptions have changed - but most of the people are still there. Actually, technology has allowed the company to expand into new markets, and whole new departments and jobs have been created.
In this specific case, hardware and software is developed in-house, employees (and contractors!) that are willing to learn are nurtured and given opportunities to grow. No in-house gym or similar perks, just solid jobs, an open mind and a certain level of trust that people know how to do their jobs and don't need to be micromanaged. I thinks that's a good recipe. Of course a lot depends on the sector the company is working in.
Need more H1B's to replace high payed workers
Never in the history of Western capitalism have lots of jobs been created, then destroyed within just a few decades or years.
It used to be that a young man could learn a skilled engineering or manufacturing trade at age 19 and then still be doing that trade at age 62. Give me a second, and I may think of one.
This is so unprecedented! Now adults have to learn something new, even after their twenties! Thanks, Obama! Thanks, GOP Congress!
Well, all that disruption was bound to reflect back. I mean, when you mess with the bull sometimes you get the horns.
I made myself laugh with the number of cliches I've managed to weave into this dense, trite post.
Will
remove nospam. to email!
Since we don't make anything in America anymore we decided that we'd make assholes
https://medium.com/bad-words/the-asshole-factory-71ff808d887c#.p2jif6fwx
the glory days of internet explorer
Displacing AMERICAN workers with CHEAPER foreign labor, and forcing the displaced workers to TRAIN their replacements.
And Privacy Badger blocked 41 trackers, this is a record for any web page I've visited.
It should not matter if the employee is adaptable. Schools aren't teaching that anymore though. Corporations have been putting pressure on schools to graduate entry-level ready candidates instead of wasting the corporations time with graduates who know theory and a broad cross section of knowledge and skills.
But those lower middle class manufacturing "tech" workers still lost their job.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I took introduction to electronics at college in the early 1990's. Tried a few times to get a summer job as an electronic assembler in Silicon Valley. The majority of workers were Filipinos, and I quickly discovered that I wouldn't get a job because I wasn't Filipino. White people, I was told, were managers and not workers. So I dropped electronics as a major. Ten years later I would go back to college to learn computer programming and earn my IT certifications, and the electronic department got reduced from one wing to a single room on campus. All the electronic assembly jobs are long gone.
It should not matter if the employee is adaptable.
Doesn't matter if the prospective employee is adaptable if the employer does not believe or does not care (because adapting requires time, access to relevant tools, and often training)
Doesn't matter if the prospective employee is adaptable if the employer does not believe or does not care (because adapting requires time, access to relevant tools, and often training).
I was out of work for two years (2009-2010), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and filed for bankruptcy. For two years I was told by hiring managers that I was overqualified for minimum wage jobs and told by recruiters that I was unemployable for everything else. Why? Because my resume had three jobs in help desk support, everyone assumed that I wanted to do help desk support. Never mind that wasn't the job I applied for. The job market didn't turn around until employers needed workers and didn't have the luxury to be picky.
They are going to have to change their name from "silicon" to something code-ish.
How about Recursion Valley?
Table-ized A.I.
The world is changing faster, that's for sure. After the dot-com crash, and the glut of IT workers in the west, along with H1B's everywhere, I looked at getting out of IT altogether. But, it looked like nothing was safe as I looked for other careers. It's going to be a bumpy ride for our children.
Table-ized A.I.
. . .about 10 years ago, I went back and did grad school (frankly to check a block for promotion. I learned almost nothing I didn't already know in Grad School, with the exception of mind-numbing detail of a technology ('distributed databases') which had already been obsoleted years before.
But the real shock was my fellow students. We were roughly 50-50, older students coming back for a Masters, and "kids" fresh out of undergrad. And uniformly, I noticed that the "kids" had absolutely horrible language skills: they could not spell, EVEN with spell-check. They could not write coherently, they had serious problems articulating a reasoned argument from evidence. In two memorable cases, I was told to accept the opinion from a student on an objective technical issue because they "felt" it was correct, even though it was an EASY dead lock to prove otherwise.
I now teach part-time at night at a local college. I've found that my experience in Grad School was NOT an isolated incident. OK, I'm a Baby Boomer. But you would THINK that basic skills would still be taught. From the evidence, I conclude that is not the general case anymore. . .
I found this when I went back to school a few years ago. I also ran into a similar situation staffing a help desk. I had two major issues. First, I started out too lenient. My immediate superior was lax on the discipline, and that worked, we all showed up, did our jobs, went home. I hired these kids in their early 20's and it was a mess. Start times, showing up, doing what they are told to do the way they are told to do it, and simply calling in to let me know if they would be late or out. Ended up having to crack down, start writing people up, and in a couple instances termination. The other major issue was grammar. A lot of the support was delivered via "Chat" Window. The directive was proper grammer, user of clients name, and professional language. Example: "How are you today Mr. Smith?" "How may I be of service?" What we got: "How R U?" "Whats wrong?" These were college grads.
the hardware has faded in importance compared with the software
Uh, no. Hardware is of utmost importance (you can't run software and bring all those applications to the hoi polloi.). It's just so happen that hardware can now be commoditized with the bulk of it (if not its entirety) being manufactured and assembled somewhere else where it is cheaper. If your hardware is not truly innovative, it is going to be handled at a FoxConn assembly line.
seriously, WTF is wrong with all of you posting mod advice? If you opinion mattered then you'd have mod points today. But your opinion on this doesn't matter.
Damn millennials think they need to speak up a be heard over the dumbest shit.
Does hardware need to be "truly innovative" anymore? Is there much practical difference between a washing machine and a tablet?
(that was two questions, but at least one was rhetorical)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I interview a lot of candidates, and I don't even have to wonder when they graduated anymore. Anyone that answers two or more of the technical questions with "duh" and a blank stare is undoubtedly a millennial. That would be under 30, so I guess the older portion of the group wasn't as badly educated. The current college grads should sue their institutions for not educating them properly. Then again, I suppose they'd have to go back and learn to read to be able to know that. College should not be high school v 2.0. Not everyone gets a degree - I know, that would be a shocker that you invest $ into something and fail. So it goes, and ever has until recently apparently. Just imagine one of these folks becoming a Dr: How R U? Let me poke U with this thingie, wowzer. Idiocracy was not supposed to be a goal.
In other words, "some tech-related jobs are becoming obsolete while others aren't." This is dumb.
We were roughly 50-50, older students coming back for a Masters, and "kids" fresh out of undergrad. And uniformly, I noticed that the "kids" had absolutely horrible language skills: they could not spell, EVEN with spell-check. They could not write coherently, they had serious problems articulating a reasoned argument from evidence.
Somehow, I suspect this is due to the difference in ages. I bet if you took a bunch of baby boomer's writings from their early 20's and showed them to other baby boomers today, they'd say the same thing. 25+ years is a long time to refine those language skills.
If you destroy the ability to use a language, you destroy the culture that uses the language. It's a great way to affect the change of, say, stripping away all constitutional rights in a country that was one of the first on earth to have a constitution based on the idea that the citizen was the ultimate in authority, rather than the state. If you remove the ability to use language, you remove the ability to reason.
Ironically enough, I'm an Xer - born in the mid 1960s - and I have always thought the boomers were terrible at writing.
New tech and information jobs are replace more than they create. Technology is replacing jobs at an alarming rate. Pair that with a 300% increase in world population in the last year. More people and fewer jobs. We're entering a new economic paradigm...
http://kehmresearch.com/how-to-protect-yourself-from-the-revolution-today/
Wealth redistribution will be increasingly important... Already we're seeing the topic all over political debates. Overall our living standards will continue to rise technological advances. But many side effects will need to be fixed.