

Ask HN: Just how bad is the Valley economy - willheim

So last night (Sunday October 24th) I was watching 60 minutes and they had a 20 minute segment on how the SV/San Jose area was in complete and utter economic meltdown.  They were talking about the 99ers (99 weeks unemployed) and interviewed all these PhDs and other qualified older people who had lost their jobs, couldn't find another, and had burned through savings.<p>I've looked at moving there but wonder now just how bad the local economy is.  Here on HN it's all rosy (bootstrapped but rosy) with VC cash being talked about every day.<p>What's the real story?  Seems people can buy homes in San Jose for far less than renting in SF.
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mechanical_fish
I used to work at a fab in Fremont. It was one of several Silicon Valley fabs
that are now no longer operating in the Valley. Its owner at the time,
Agilent, cut eight to nine _thousand_ jobs in the early 2000s:

[http://news.cnet.com/Agilent-plans-more-
layoffs/2100-1006_3-...](http://news.cnet.com/Agilent-plans-more-
layoffs/2100-1006_3-959167.html)

Last year Agilent, which is still a big area employer, cut another 2700
people:

[http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/layoffs-hit-thousands-at-
ibm-a...](http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/layoffs-hit-thousands-at-ibm-and-
agilent-why-is-high-tech-getting-hit-so-hard/)

It is worth remembering that Silicon Valley's first name is "silicon" for a
reason. The area made its name with hardware and fabs. The folks in the area
who are fifty and sixty years old are proportionally more likely to have
extensive experience in hardware and fabs than in web development, and many of
the fabs are closing down. Moreover, because it took a lot of people to run a
fab -- more in the past than today -- there are a _lot_ of those people.

Yes, life here on HN is great, but that's because of the tiny sample size. For
example, what is the total number of people who have been employed at _any_ YC
startup over the last decade? I bet it doesn't add up to eight thousand
people.

So it depends on your skills. If you want a job running a lithography tool on
a production line your job prospects are different than if you want a job
writing Ruby apps for a YC startup.

------
iamelgringo
From Mountain View to San Francisco, there are dozens of startups that have
gotten funded in the last 9 months. I'd be willing to be there will be another
3-4 dozen that get funded by the end of the year.

The vast majority of those startups are Web/Mobile/Social/Gaming startups.
Take 100 startups with $500k in the bank looking for one two three
(web/mobile/flash) developers and you have a rough idea of what the hiring
market is like in SF. Add Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Yelp and Google
starting to compete more heavily for engineers, and you'll start to see why
recruitment is going to get a lot tougher in the next year or two for
startups.

From Mountain View South to San Jose and in the East Bay, the startups have
traditionally been more hardware/silicon oriented. Those industries have been
consolidating a lot, and those companies have been laying off people. It's
people that come from those industries that have gotten laid off.

The 60 minutes episode talked about the San Jose area, and if you read the
article [1], it primarily talks about older workers who were in PR, office
managers, personnel, etc...

All that to say, is that after we get funded, we're going to be staying in San
Jose. Office space is cheaper, housing is cheaper. It's a lot easier to get
around by car. There's parking for less than $20/3 hours. And, there's a lot
of experienced talent that's looking for work.

ref: [1]
[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978943.shtml?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel)

~~~
hga
Also, how many silicon startups have there been as of late?

In general terms, it's my impression that the days of the US VC funded, high
capital requirement hardware startup are over with the closing of the IPO
window.

Lots of HN style consumer internet companies can hope to get bought by Google,
Facebook, Twitter, whatever, or just thrive on organic growth since their up
front capital costs are relatively modest.

As I keep asking, who's going to be able to create the next thing like FPGAs?
(As least in the US.)

------
pg
What? The biggest problem startups we've funded have is hiring.

~~~
malandrew
pg, I see that there is a page for jobs at YCombinator companies, but it is
very empty with just one job at BackType listed:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>

Are there more positions you are hiring for that are not listed there?

~~~
pg
There are a lot more. I need to fix the software that drives that page. For
various stupid reasons it only shows jobs posted in the last couple days.

~~~
owkaye
If you need someone to fix it for you I can certainly use the work.

Sometimes it irritates me to see so many people apparently complaining about
the shortage of competent / qualified programmers these days. I'm more than 50
years old with nearly two decades of professional experience as a programmer.
I ran my own outsource programmer training center in Asia for several years
and we ran more than 200 trainees through the system before we closed.

I also have an additional range of business experience that might come in
handy to a future employer, especially in a company run by people much younger
and less experienced than me.

And I'm not afraid to put in 12 hours days for weeks on end when it's
important to the company.

But I never see any job listings for people who can bring what I want to bring
to the table. Instead I typically see complaints about startups not being able
to find qualified engineers. Yet I've been back in the USA for more than a
year already, and so far I haven't been able to get a single startup to
consider hiring me.

Is it my age that puts them off? Or should I be looking for work with
companies other than startups? Or am I looking at the wrong startups?

Or should I just do my own startup and stop trying to help with someone
else's?

~~~
malandrew
I'm not criticizing, but just giving my two cents here to give perspective.

The problem with being 50 years old is not being 50 years old, but coming
across as acting 50 years old.

Startups don't need someone who can manage an outsource program to train 200
employees. They need someone who can ship. Someone who is implementing
features and building product value.

Culturally startups today want to stay small because that's a competitive
advantage that allows pivoting until you either have a home run business model
or can be acquired by a larger competitor.

I don't know you or your situation, but instead of calling attention to what
you did in the training center in Asia, tell the community about what you've
built. What's in your GitHub profile?

As far as training is concerned it's better to train a half dozen brilliant
rock solid (as opposed to rock star) programmers that can ship.

I think it's absolutely awesome that you are programming to this day and
willing to put in the 12 hours, but I think it's better to see that zeal for
training to use trying to creating a hardcore team of "special forces"
developers instead of a whole platoon of "grunts" or "marines".

The people who want what you have offered to bring to the table are
enterprises. If you want to go after startups, you need to start focusing on
startup scale projects. If you are talking about more than 6-8 devs on a team,
it's already too large.

On top of that, it's important to be building teams with balance, just like a
small special forces team in the Navy Seals or Army Rangers. You need to be
able to train and lead people that complement each other and can build a whole
product, front-end, back-end and everything in between.

Again, I'm not judging you here. Just putting in perspective that what you are
offering in your reply is not what I see the HN community asking for.

------
beunick
I saw the piece as well.. pretty depressing. A start-up migth not have the
money to hire an old qualified PhD... I am not if an old qualified PhD will be
interested either.. Almost feels like we have 2 worlds in the valley

~~~
willheim
I don't know about that. One of the most depressing bits was an engineer who
just took a job at Target for $9.50/hr.

There were also plenty of office managers and others whom I would assume could
bring forth plenty of skills that a start-up (funded) could employ.
Particularly in sales, one would think.

------
anonymous245
Link to article:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978943.shtml)

