And what it does can be duplicated by a large company that puts its mind to it.
By the way, what GM does can be duplicated by a large company that puts its mind to it too. It's happened many times in the past. Ever heard of Toyota?
Ahh, so it's not deceiving you. It's not deceiving or uninformative to the majority of people who understand the marketplace. It's uninformative to those who don't understand its meaning, just like quantum physics is uninformative to people who have never studied it.
Well, you're not really backing up your assertions with much. Google makes ad space. People pay for that. GM makes cars. People pay GM less than it costs them to make the car. Companies are WORTH what they make + the value of their assets. Right now, GM is WORTH less than Google. There's no intrinsic value in dollars to ANYTHING. It's completely determined by how much people are willing to pay for it or sell it for, depending on which side of the marketplace you are on. GMs cars are worth jack if no one wants to buy them, for instance, just as Google's ads are worth nothing if no one wants to buy them. Your unemployment had nothing to do with the value of these companies. It's silly to equate them.
I don't know what you specifically mean by paper assets. Are you talking about short term securities and cash?
The market can be down on heavy selling. Sellers could be jumping the spread and taking out levels of buyers thus the selling is what is moving the market rather than the opposite. On a down day, let's say there are 2 buyers and 2 sellers. The sellers are at 100@$3 and 100@$4 and the buyers are at 150@$1 and 50@$2. If the $3 seller decides to jump the $2-$3 spread and accept 50@$2 for the stock, the stock is is considered to be down on selling because the buyers haven't moved up and the spread is now between the $1 guy and the remaining 50 shares @$3.
I agree with you - basically, Google's model isn't so different from other forms of media (TV, radio, magazines, newspapers). They all work the ad market pretty well to get their revenue. I'm sure there are newspapers that have been around for 100 years doing the same thing. However, I think in addition to the points you bring up about linkfarms and blogspammers and such - there's one more liability that Google has - Google is more susceptible to a new entrant into the market eroding their market share. I recognize that it's not easy to enter the market for search services, but I think it's easier than entering the market for say, radio, because radio requires expensive equipment, just like a search engine, but in addition, it requires FCC licensing. So essentially, imo, a market inefficiency, the FCC, gives the radio and TV stations an abnormally high barrier to entry that companies like Yahoo and Google can't rely upon.
What model are you using for your valuation of Google? It seems like you're using the "I know better than you" model, but I conceded that I don't really know. On a price to estimated earnings growth basis, Google is UNDERVALUED compared to Yahoo, which many might consider to be its nearest competitor in the space and a firm that has at least 10 years of market history. Perhaps its irrational exhurberance on the part of the market place for both stocks. But, hey, GM is selling at P/E premium over Microsfot so maybe that's exhurberance as well. Or maybe that's just Kerkorian. When you figure in discounted cash flow from dividends, GM is really lagging. Years and years of profits in the past can't make up for a weak balance sheet today. Would you suggest that people invest in Delta Air Lines and UAL? They had years and years of profits before their empire crumbled.
Makes you wonder, once again. Remember - it does not matter if you have the greatest idea on Earth, if your revenue is not from tangible assets (for relative measures of tangible ofcourse), the market will put you down eventually.
What do you mean by "tangible assets"? Ads sales is a large source of revenue for companies such as Disney, GM's NBC division, much of Rupert Murdoch's empire, and nearly every magazine and newspaper in the world. So Google is offering a bit more than just ad sales - they are offering a search engine.
Anyone that suggests that a brand new company like Google shouldn't be worth 4x more than General Motors just isn't thinking correctly.
Wow, if you're suggesting that GM be valued more highly than Google, then finance isn't the field for you. GM builds cars and loses money doing it. It has HUGE overhead. It has pension plans and healthcare plans to which it committed during better times. GM is expected to lose $4 billion this year. It has major manufacturing facilities in a country where costs are high and they need people to scale.
By contraast, Google hires far fewer people. Google has no imbedded pension costs eating away at profits. Google doesn't need to invest in manufacturing facilities. Google is expected to earn close to $1 billion this year.
Underemployment is what happens when there is an oversupply of qualified workers. The employers in this case are the root of the problem since they are using federal immigration policy to subsidize their operations and create an oversupply of labor.
Qualified workers.
I notice you didn't supply the visa code for this unknown program that imports lawyers.
They are doctors - in case you hadn't noticed, our country needs them. But now you're just being rude. If you can't discuss something in a civilized manner, then, well it's not my job to raise you.
I'm not surprised. Like the rest of your opinions, it's based on what you want to believe instead of facts. The IEEE and the ACM are the two most highly regarded IT professional organizations in the country, whether that fits in with what you want to believe or not.
Your opinions are based on what you wish to believe as well. You seem to think there's some government conspiracy so that the BLS can't be trusted after all.
Or out of benefits. You've swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Just because someone takes a certain job to feed their family doesn't mean that they are unqualified to do the job they were trained for. Underemployment is the same as unemployment except to government statisticians who want to make the picture as rosy as possible.
Nor does it mean that they are qualified to do the job that they want to do! That's the problem - underemployment is NOT the same as unemployment. Underemployment is just an opinion a worker has but doesn't take the employer into account.
There are no government programs designed to import lawyers or doctors, unlike the H-1B which is designed to import programmers.
Funny - that's how parts of my family got here. You're dead wrong about that.
The numbers provided by the IEEE are real numbers.
Exactly - they are employed. It's unreasonable to believe that everyone who happens to consider themselves a programmer necessarily has the goods to be one. If engineering and programming had larger barriers to entry like law and medicine, it would be a better picture.
But if you believe everything that the IEEE is telling you...well nevermind as well - they have protectionist incentives to paint a bleak picture. I'm trying to find someone whose statistics are not government because you believe in a bias there and not from a trade group because I believe in a bias there. Got any suggestions?
I can't speak for PyWiz, but programming and engineering unemployment is at all-time highs. Even the new H-1B visas are not being grabbed up - that tells you how little interest there is in hiring.
Just FYI - the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not agree with your assessment that programming and engineering unemployment is at an all-time high. For more information, visit: BLS Unemployment by Industry for May
That would be spectacular. Now if Sun were relying on their hardware business for their profit...they actually rely on their services division for most of their profit. Despite being about 1/3 of their revenue, services makes up about 60% of their profits.
I think you're relying on bad data for your analysis. I'm not sure how Yahoo has come up with a P/E of 19 - Sun was not profitable last quarter (-.02), nor were they profitable in the ttm (-.04). The company is expected to return to profitability, but they aren't doing well now nor have they had a profitable 12m time period since 2001.
I think you're wrong. By support staff, I didn't mean people who do tech support or the like, but people like the HR reps and the legal advisement team. Even the analyst who don't book revenue themselves but help others book revenue are valuable but their contribution can't be directly measured.
Actually it was a couple of months ago - DB has offices around the world and this was in New York as part of a larger reorganization effort that started in Germany.
There is no getting away from the fact that this is a class issue. The shareholders just want higher profits. The workers, meanwhile, have given the best of themselves to a company, expecting, naively but righteously, some loyalty in return.
Well it just goes to show - you should either be a shareholder or don't give the best of yourself to a corporate entity that, by law in many countries, must look out for the best interests of its owners.
That really works well when you can evaluate how much a particular division generates in hard numbers. It works great in consulting firms since revenue is tied directly to hours billed. However, in a lot of large firms, entire divisions of people are support people who are not in a position to generate revenue for the company. They may be there to book the revenue or to prevent losses from legal issues or theft, etc.. The value that they add isn't so easy to measure. Now, you could argue that each division could hire their own set of such people, but many companies find that they get an economy of scale from having them all in one divison.
That being said, not every layoff is a terrible thing. I have some friends who were dying to get laid off from Deutsche Bank because of the generous termination packages and the abundance of positions elsewhere.
Their PC business wasn't a big money maker for IBM. IIRC, they lost money in the hardware business except for laptop sales. So it wasn't such a bad thing to unload that division.
Re:Johnny can still program, he just can't get a j
on
Johnny Can So Program
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· Score: 1
I am an instructor for an LSAT prep-company, and I see this phenomenon all the time.
I think that the vast majority of kids in my classes are there because their parents want them to be.
Needless to say, those kids aren't the hardest working.
I am afraid that the sky may indeed be falling in the U.S. - this phenomenon may be more prevalent than we would like to admit.
That phenomenon is not limited to the US by any measure. Parents everywhere have an idea of what they wish their children would be when they get older. Consider the very countries that we seem so scared of - India, China, Japan, Singapore, etc. - Those countries are well-known for having parents that push their children in a particular direction (usually math and science) at the exclusion of other interests. Those parents come here and do the same thing here. It works pretty well.
Slashdot Mirror
And what it does can be duplicated by a large company that puts its mind to it.
By the way, what GM does can be duplicated by a large company that puts its mind to it too. It's happened many times in the past. Ever heard of Toyota?
Ahh, so it's not deceiving you. It's not deceiving or uninformative to the majority of people who understand the marketplace. It's uninformative to those who don't understand its meaning, just like quantum physics is uninformative to people who have never studied it.
Well, you're not really backing up your assertions with much. Google makes ad space. People pay for that. GM makes cars. People pay GM less than it costs them to make the car. Companies are WORTH what they make + the value of their assets. Right now, GM is WORTH less than Google. There's no intrinsic value in dollars to ANYTHING. It's completely determined by how much people are willing to pay for it or sell it for, depending on which side of the marketplace you are on. GMs cars are worth jack if no one wants to buy them, for instance, just as Google's ads are worth nothing if no one wants to buy them. Your unemployment had nothing to do with the value of these companies. It's silly to equate them.
I don't know what you specifically mean by paper assets. Are you talking about short term securities and cash?
The market can be down on heavy selling. Sellers could be jumping the spread and taking out levels of buyers thus the selling is what is moving the market rather than the opposite. On a down day, let's say there are 2 buyers and 2 sellers. The sellers are at 100@$3 and 100@$4 and the buyers are at 150@$1 and 50@$2. If the $3 seller decides to jump the $2-$3 spread and accept 50@$2 for the stock, the stock is is considered to be down on selling because the buyers haven't moved up and the spread is now between the $1 guy and the remaining 50 shares @$3.
I agree with you - basically, Google's model isn't so different from other forms of media (TV, radio, magazines, newspapers). They all work the ad market pretty well to get their revenue. I'm sure there are newspapers that have been around for 100 years doing the same thing. However, I think in addition to the points you bring up about linkfarms and blogspammers and such - there's one more liability that Google has - Google is more susceptible to a new entrant into the market eroding their market share. I recognize that it's not easy to enter the market for search services, but I think it's easier than entering the market for say, radio, because radio requires expensive equipment, just like a search engine, but in addition, it requires FCC licensing. So essentially, imo, a market inefficiency, the FCC, gives the radio and TV stations an abnormally high barrier to entry that companies like Yahoo and Google can't rely upon.
What model are you using for your valuation of Google? It seems like you're using the "I know better than you" model, but I conceded that I don't really know. On a price to estimated earnings growth basis, Google is UNDERVALUED compared to Yahoo, which many might consider to be its nearest competitor in the space and a firm that has at least 10 years of market history. Perhaps its irrational exhurberance on the part of the market place for both stocks. But, hey, GM is selling at P/E premium over Microsfot so maybe that's exhurberance as well. Or maybe that's just Kerkorian. When you figure in discounted cash flow from dividends, GM is really lagging. Years and years of profits in the past can't make up for a weak balance sheet today. Would you suggest that people invest in Delta Air Lines and UAL? They had years and years of profits before their empire crumbled.
Makes you wonder, once again. Remember - it does not matter if you have the greatest idea on Earth, if your revenue is not from tangible assets (for relative measures of tangible ofcourse), the market will put you down eventually.
What do you mean by "tangible assets"? Ads sales is a large source of revenue for companies such as Disney, GM's NBC division, much of Rupert Murdoch's empire, and nearly every magazine and newspaper in the world. So Google is offering a bit more than just ad sales - they are offering a search engine.
Anyone that suggests that a brand new company like Google shouldn't be worth 4x more than General Motors just isn't thinking correctly.
Wow, if you're suggesting that GM be valued more highly than Google, then finance isn't the field for you. GM builds cars and loses money doing it. It has HUGE overhead. It has pension plans and healthcare plans to which it committed during better times. GM is expected to lose $4 billion this year. It has major manufacturing facilities in a country where costs are high and they need people to scale.
By contraast, Google hires far fewer people. Google has no imbedded pension costs eating away at profits. Google doesn't need to invest in manufacturing facilities. Google is expected to earn close to $1 billion this year.
For which one would you pay more?
Ok, continue with your conspiracy theory. I'm sure the tin foil hat fits tightly.
Underemployment is what happens when there is an oversupply of qualified workers. The employers in this case are the root of the problem since they are using federal immigration policy to subsidize their operations and create an oversupply of labor.
Qualified workers.
I notice you didn't supply the visa code for this unknown program that imports lawyers.
They are doctors - in case you hadn't noticed, our country needs them. But now you're just being rude. If you can't discuss something in a civilized manner, then, well it's not my job to raise you.
I'm not surprised. Like the rest of your opinions, it's based on what you want to believe instead of facts. The IEEE and the ACM are the two most highly regarded IT professional organizations in the country, whether that fits in with what you want to believe or not.
Your opinions are based on what you wish to believe as well. You seem to think there's some government conspiracy so that the BLS can't be trusted after all.
Or out of benefits. You've swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Just because someone takes a certain job to feed their family doesn't mean that they are unqualified to do the job they were trained for. Underemployment is the same as unemployment except to government statisticians who want to make the picture as rosy as possible.
Nor does it mean that they are qualified to do the job that they want to do! That's the problem - underemployment is NOT the same as unemployment. Underemployment is just an opinion a worker has but doesn't take the employer into account.
There are no government programs designed to import lawyers or doctors, unlike the H-1B which is designed to import programmers.
Funny - that's how parts of my family got here. You're dead wrong about that.
The numbers provided by the IEEE are real numbers.
I'm sorry - I just don't believe that.
Exactly - they are employed. It's unreasonable to believe that everyone who happens to consider themselves a programmer necessarily has the goods to be one. If engineering and programming had larger barriers to entry like law and medicine, it would be a better picture.
But if you believe everything that the IEEE is telling you...well nevermind as well - they have protectionist incentives to paint a bleak picture. I'm trying to find someone whose statistics are not government because you believe in a bias there and not from a trade group because I believe in a bias there. Got any suggestions?
I can't speak for PyWiz, but programming and engineering unemployment is at all-time highs. Even the new H-1B visas are not being grabbed up - that tells you how little interest there is in hiring.
Just FYI - the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not agree with your assessment that programming and engineering unemployment is at an all-time high. For more information, visit: BLS Unemployment by Industry for May
That would be spectacular. Now if Sun were relying on their hardware business for their profit...they actually rely on their services division for most of their profit. Despite being about 1/3 of their revenue, services makes up about 60% of their profits.
I think you're relying on bad data for your analysis. I'm not sure how Yahoo has come up with a P/E of 19 - Sun was not profitable last quarter (-.02), nor were they profitable in the ttm (-.04). The company is expected to return to profitability, but they aren't doing well now nor have they had a profitable 12m time period since 2001.
I'd love to see some real proof as well. I find that society seems to be devolving into two camps:
"You've done well so you must have Asperger's"
and
"You haven't done well so you must have ADD."
I find it kind of sickening. Maybe some people excel and other's don't and they are both completely normal.
I think you're wrong. By support staff, I didn't mean people who do tech support or the like, but people like the HR reps and the legal advisement team. Even the analyst who don't book revenue themselves but help others book revenue are valuable but their contribution can't be directly measured.
Actually it was a couple of months ago - DB has offices around the world and this was in New York as part of a larger reorganization effort that started in Germany.
I guess I was suggesting that maybe it's not in people's best interest to give the best of themselves to a company that isn't going to keep them :)
There is no getting away from the fact that this is a class issue. The shareholders just want higher profits. The workers, meanwhile, have given the best of themselves to a company, expecting, naively but righteously, some loyalty in return.
Well it just goes to show - you should either be a shareholder or don't give the best of yourself to a corporate entity that, by law in many countries, must look out for the best interests of its owners.
I worked for a company that was half US and half Swedish. The Swedish half had 4 weeks of vacation in the summer on top of their normal 3 weeks.
That depends entirely on the laws of the government under which you and the company operate. At-will employment isn't always present.
That really works well when you can evaluate how much a particular division generates in hard numbers. It works great in consulting firms since revenue is tied directly to hours billed. However, in a lot of large firms, entire divisions of people are support people who are not in a position to generate revenue for the company. They may be there to book the revenue or to prevent losses from legal issues or theft, etc.. The value that they add isn't so easy to measure. Now, you could argue that each division could hire their own set of such people, but many companies find that they get an economy of scale from having them all in one divison.
That being said, not every layoff is a terrible thing. I have some friends who were dying to get laid off from Deutsche Bank because of the generous termination packages and the abundance of positions elsewhere.
Their PC business wasn't a big money maker for IBM. IIRC, they lost money in the hardware business except for laptop sales. So it wasn't such a bad thing to unload that division.
I am an instructor for an LSAT prep-company, and I see this phenomenon all the time. I think that the vast majority of kids in my classes are there because their parents want them to be. Needless to say, those kids aren't the hardest working. I am afraid that the sky may indeed be falling in the U.S. - this phenomenon may be more prevalent than we would like to admit.
That phenomenon is not limited to the US by any measure. Parents everywhere have an idea of what they wish their children would be when they get older. Consider the very countries that we seem so scared of - India, China, Japan, Singapore, etc. - Those countries are well-known for having parents that push their children in a particular direction (usually math and science) at the exclusion of other interests. Those parents come here and do the same thing here. It works pretty well.