Posted on 03/08/2004 3:14:41 PM PST by Mini-14
MARCH 08, 2004 room, and probably the stupidest. I get to learn from the ultrasmart and creative folks I meet. So why do I have an uneasy feeling these days about the place, even as an economic recovery for the technology industry starts to gather steam? One factor abounds with irony. A few years ago, I wondered if the Valley was sowing the seeds of its demise by creating the communications and collaboration tools that would make it much less necessary to be there in a physical sense. The near-unanimous consensus at the time among the top people in the field was that the Valley had nothing to worry about. I never entirely bought their faith, though the Valley has repeatedly shown an ability to rebound to new heights after deep economic downturns. The recent evidence, notably the surge of offshoring, makes me ask again -- about the Valley and the entire nation. And I wonder if something is genuinely different now. Intel CEO Craig Barrett put his finger on it a few weeks ago when he stopped by my newspaper for a long chat with some reporters and editors. What's new this time, he told us in a persuasive way, is the nature of the global workforce. For the first time in human history, Barrett said, a truly gigantic pool of well-educated, technically adept and eager-to-please labor is being created. This pool of talent, which will include hundreds of millions of people in China and India (many of whom speak English fluently), has another characteristic: a willingness to work for a fraction of what Americans expect. This is not because they like living poorly. It's because local conditions and currency exchange rates make what would seem like a pauper's salary here a highly attractive one there. The U.S. largely came to grips with a similar crisis in low-end manufacturing. We moved up the value chain as a society, painful as this was for the less-educated, hardworking people who lost middle-class jobs and had to settle for lower-paid service employment. How high can we move on the value chain now? I travel widely. One thing I know for sure is that Silicon Valley and the U.S. have no monopoly on brains or energy. We do have an advantage in promoting a culture of risk, of entrepreneurialism. But other places are beginning to adopt even that value, too. The spectacle of politicians promoting trade wars in the name of stemming job losses is disturbing, if understandable. I wish they'd devote that energy to telling the harder truth: that the U.S. will need to buckle down in unprecedented ways, with vast new investments in education and infrastructure, plus a new commitment to the best aspects of entrepreneurialism. We may be facing big trouble in the near term, no matter what we do. That's the kind of news few politicians dare deliver. Barrett, running for no office, offered a hard truth. As he gave his litany of why conditions truly are different this time, we asked if this suggested a generation of lowered expectations in the U.S. "It's tough to come to another conclusion than that," he replied.
But that's making 5% of the yearly per capita income in an hour for an Indian.
What one gets paid doesn't matter so much as what one can buy with that money.
In 1960, our per capita yearly income was under $3,000, so $25/hr would have been significant wages.
Are you referring to the outsourcing of government jobs? Now the taxpayers can pay three times the amount for the job to be done -- and private contractors with connections are making out like bandits. Just drive outside the Beltway (Washington DC) -- all those office buildings are government buildings -- just giving the money to insiders/contractors to do the job now. The little incest game -- one day govy, next day contractor. One day awarding the contract, next day working for the contractor. One day head of company, next day appointed head of agency that awards conctracts to company. It's a great game!
On my agenda for this year. Too windy this time of year (I think), I'll probably go this summer sometime. A skydiving club operates out of an airport just a few miles from me. They got instruction down to the point that you can jump your first day now. Last time I was set up for a jump, my instructor (a co-worker back when I lived in Oklahoma) managed to get killed the week before he was going to take me up during a skydiving exibition. Maybe I'll have better luck next time.
Yeah, I got that kind of deal as part of being hired in by investors. But that only works once when a company is formed and before anyone puts in money at a higher price. Any other non-qualified option grant at a price below the market price is income, and is taxed as income. That makes those kinds of options extremely risky - for the grantee.
The main form of funny business is in repricing options. But even in those cases the vesting schedule resets - it isn't retroactively repriced. So that kind of fix only works if there is some event, like an acquisition that accellerates vesting.
Oh, and if you are getting a divorce, do it BEFORE your shares are liquid. You can often get them valued at the exercise price.
What are you people, on crack? It's Holmdel and Murray Hill, which is really in Berkeley Heights. For that matter, there is no Murray Hill - it used to be a Post Office, but never a town or township.
My parents started to work at Murray Hill in the fifties, and my dad moved down to Holmdel in the sixties, after working at West Street for a while. Then my mom moved down to Crawford Hill ( an adjunct of Holmdel, where the cosmic background radiation was discovered. ) And we moved down to Holmdel the year I graduated from college, 1970.
I started work at Indian Hill Bell Labs in 1979, and I'm still there ( which is an amazing thing), although of course it's Lucent now.
My mom hobnobbed with a lot of the biggies, Nobel Prize winners Penzias and Wilson, Hamming, Pierce ( Echo and Telstar ) ... Tukey ...
Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they'd never end
The little garage shop I joined last year went from a $1M cap to a $5M cap in one year, and will probably hit a $30M cap value this year pre a $15M VC round. One of our competitors that is public in Europe has a $200M market cap. Or is that too small-time for you?
Just because nobody is interested in a competitor to Microsoft Office doesn't mean it's game-over.
It's helping one machinist I know whose job was outsourced to China. The guvamint is paying him to retrain as an electrician. Meanwhile the wife is supporting the family.
Outsourcers themselves say they are moving jobs overseas because of the price of labor. Are they lying? Not once have I heard them give any other reason. The price of labor is determined by supply and demand, nothing more. These countries have a massive supply of labor with little demand for it. This is and L-1/H-1B are nothing more than an attempt to drive down the price of US labor by creating a massive supply. It's really that simple. The end result is equally simple, lower wages and lower consumer demand. Viola, you have accomplished nothing in the long term.
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