
The Human Capital Bubble - kqr2
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/167581
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jamesk2
This article speaks to supply and demand as it relates to poor interpretations
of the market signals. An interesting read for Entrepreneurs.

Remember when the key metric was "hits" for websites? I remember a client
saying he wanted to maximize hits and I told him that we could slice up some
big gifs into smaller gifs and that would make the hit count go up. I was
trying to illustrate the inadequacy of hits as a metric but that just made his
eyes lights up with the idea that he could artificially pump up the number of
hits his company's site was getting.

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DenisM
One consequence here is that as fewer smart people will go into finance some
of them will go into software engineering, driving down wages for junior
developers. Bad news if you are a junior developers, good job if you are a
manager (or plan to become one soon).

~~~
Donald
Another consequence of the current economic situation is a redistribution of
business/entrepreneurial talent from the finance sector. This will naturally
create more jobs in other sections of the economy, including technology.

The pressure on labor you're thinking about is true, of course, but the jobs
market isn't a zero-sum game. Creative talent can increase the economic
benefit for everyone, even as others stream in for their piece of the pie.

~~~
Empact
For example, aside from the dozen or more web companies I know who'd love to
be hiring programmers and expanding their business, there's also me, a lowly
moonlighter. Were I able to hire and build my business to the point of
profitability in the near term (I've yet to launch), I'd be able to hire still
more developers to further the business and so on.

Which all goes to say that there's not a fixed supply of jobs we're fighting
for. We're working towards value, and value has a way of building on itself.
If the software industry can create more value with those incremental workers,
then the migration is good for us all.

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slpsys
I'm not sure how relevant this article is to HN; not that in the sense that it
shouldn't have been posted, but it's focused squarely on human capital as it
relates to Wall Street. A perfectly fine approach, and relevant for Yahoo
Finance, but it doesn't have much to do with tech. I suspect that what speaks
to those who were wooed directly into investment banks following college isn't
the same impetus that drives 'rock star' developers. Or regular developers who
love what they do.

~~~
mattyb
_On-Topic:...anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

Not everything on HN needs to 'have much to do with tech.'

~~~
slpsys
Long after the point, but I explicitly stated, ".. not in that it shouldn't
have been posted, .." The line 'having much to do with tech' was also
referring to the human capital he was talking about, decidedly _not_ the
article itself. I agree with the premise of the article, and agree that the
signals being missed are germane to all entrepreneurs and businessmen, but I
expressly meant that it isn't as if in the reshuffling of human capital we'd
see another massive influx into the technology sector as in the first dot com
bubble. That's what I was talking about, not suggesting HN turn into Digg.
Apologies if the first line was misleading.

