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."

Comments

Tech fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't manufacturing be in the title?

Tech Jobs Need Replacing

[Arcady13]

You should replace the person with the tech job of writing headlines with a new person with the tech job of writing headlines.

The software is getting worse, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: The software is getting worse, though.

[ranton]

It's pretty obvious that his bigoted anti-hipster / millenial comments are what got it modded down, regardless of the quality of the rest of the post. It will probably be nodded back up eventually.

Re:The software is getting worse, though.

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

I'm not sure about 2005, but I totally agree with you. All three major operating systems (Windows, OS X, Linux) started going downhill when style became more important than function. Looking at Apple, it was an incredibly huge mistake to let an industrial designer in charge of user interface design. They're two totally different fields that require completely different skill sets and knowledge.

The end result is barely adequate hardware used to display flat graphics in washed-out pastel colours resulting in user-hostile interfaces with small fonts rendered with insufficient contrast.

Re:The software is getting worse, though.

[chipschap]

I don't know enough to comment about hipsters and millenials. To each his own. But I do agree with the comment that form and style now seem more important than function and even basic quality. I think the smartphone mess is really characteristic of this, but it reaches to the desktop as well.

The ultimate in function, the command line, is the minimum in style. (Of course there are usability arguments, but my point still stands.)

All I have to do is look at Windows 8. I'm honestly impressed with the slick appearance, very far beyond my Gnome 2 desktop. And it's great until you actually try to do something ... at which point you realize that glitz and glitter don't get work done.

Re: The software is getting worse, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is it "bigotry"? Most software UI design/development is done by people in their 20s and early 30s. You know, people born after 1980. By definition they're part of the Millennial Generation, hence it's perfectly correct and acceptable to refer to them as "Millennials". And nearly all of those people do subscribe to the "Hipster" way of life. One of the core tenets of the "Hipster" philosophy is putting design above utility, which is exactly what we do see. When a group of people do something wrong, and they're part of well defined groups (like "Millennials" and "Hipsters"), it's not "bigotry" to point out that they've screwed up!

Re: The software is getting worse, though.

[ranton]

How the hell is it "bigotry"? Most software UI design/development is done by people in their 20s and early 30s. You know, people born after 1980. By definition they're part of the Millennial Generation, hence it's perfectly correct and acceptable to refer to them as "Millennials". And nearly all of those people do subscribe to the "Hipster" way of life.

There are about 77-80 million Millennials in the US alone. This group is more socioeconomically, ethnically, and ideologically diverse than any previous generation. Yet you stereotype about a quarter of the US population into a single narrow ill-defined group.

And while perhaps a large percentage of mobile apps and young startups have their UI's designed primarily by Millennials, I doubt most software is designed and approved by people under the age of 35. I agree the majority of the work may be done by Millennials, but the Directors and VPs approving the designs before they are released to the public are probably Gen X. I would be willing to bet most of the important design decisions made for Windows 10 (mentioned by the OP) were done by Gen X. The Lead Designer, for instance, graduated from college in 1990 (Albert Shum).

One of the core tenets of the "Hipster" philosophy is putting design above utility

Hipster is such a loosely defined derogatory term that any claim there are core tenets of their philosophy is suspect. And if there were, it would based more on independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, appreciation for independent art, and creativity (stolen from Urban Dictionary). Counter-culture is not the same as form over function. It is simply a rejection of main stream culture.

Re: The software is getting worse, though.

[swb]

Counter-culture is not the same as form over function. It is simply a rejection of main stream culture.

It strikes me that in previous generations, counter-culture had much more emphasis on the counter part of it. It was more than just a rejection of the content of the dominant culture, but also a vigorous rejection of the structure of the dominant culture. It was as much about being *against* it as you were in creating a new culture. There was a strong undercurrent of nihilism.

Of course, marketing and advertising have long figured out how to extract the style and form of counter-cultures, sanitizing them of any of their hostility to mainstream thinking, and presenting it as something new and improved.

So what I think is now presented as counter-culture really isn't -- it's the same old structure and system, this time with plaid shirts, beards and microbrews.