Unemployment Hits New High In Silicon Valley 338
Though there may be some degree of cushion for IT workers in the US generally, Slatterz writes "The steadily climbing unemployment rate in Silicon Valley has reached a shocking four-year high
of 6.6 per cent. Recent statistics indicate that the percentage of unemployed workers in the sunny state of California has increased to 7.7 in August — up from 7.4 per cent in July. Jeffrey Lindsay of Bernstein Research explained that a number of Internet firms were chronically overstaffed."
Re:simple solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Australia sucks too (Score:5, Interesting)
Standard of living cost (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Australia sucks too (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember in 2006 an ad for a senior .NET developer job... The catch is, that ad was obviously written by HR, not IT...so they used their canned senior developer ad...
Senior developer often means 6-8 years experience. So they asked for someone with 6-8 years experience with the .NET framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
Think about it for a sec. in 2006, 6-8 years experience with VS2005... whoops much? .NET in general came out in 2002, so even if someone used the beta 1-2 years before general release, worked at Microsoft or something, you could at best brush the requirement at 6 year... 8 year was plain and simple impossible.
Funny stuff.
Re:simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of India, why not move to the Northeast U.S. or Maritime Canada? Lots of open jobs here. Companies will hire almost anybody.
(For now anyway; who knows how the recession will affect the future.)
Re:Move to Chicago (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no shortage of IT workers. There's a shortage of IT workers able/willing to work for the salaries/benefits companies are offering.
I wonder how many workers in the Valley are unemployed because of the incompetence of said recruiters? I think it's quite possible that there's jobs out there that are a match with an unemployed worker, but the recruiters (who you have to deal with if you want a job) are too stupid/ignorant/incompetent/lazy to do their jobs properly.
Re:IT Workers Cushioned From US Economic Downturn (Score:4, Interesting)
This article doesn't say that SV IT workers are experiencing high unemployment. It says that the region has high unemployment.
Hopefully, the mortgage hustlers are the ones out of jobs, instead of the people who actually do productive work.
Re:Australia sucks too (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup, exactly. I've unfortunately end up in companies like that a few times (consultant and all, I've seen everything). Its clear that liars catch a lot of jobs like that... its just too easy to say "I've worked in .NET since 1999!" and have HR eat it up. Then when the interview process moves on to you talking to the architect or project manager, THEN you tell the truth (prettied up). At that point you basically don't have competition, and its very easy to snatch the job.
Its so sad, I am down to telling all potential employers that I will stay a consultant and never end up on their payroll if I am not part of the hiring process (for software development), because otherwise I end up having to work with a bunch of lying idiots, and that is unaccessible.
Check out the U6 (Score:4, Interesting)
Now at 10.7 pct for August. Counts part-timers looking for full-time work, the discouraged etc. at 10.7 for the US.
I couldn't find numbers for silly valley, but my gut feeling is that it is above the national average there.
Re:Recession vs depression (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a very big reason why the current financial crisis is worse than anything anyone remembers. The last 50 years of living beyond our means is finally catching up to us. There simply isn't any more available credit, we've spent it all.
Any attempt at a financial rescue that does nothing to reduce debt, is no rescue at all. The only long term way out of this mess is to reduce debt. First we have to cut our spending till it's less than our income so we have something left to pay down our debt. But even this has a huge cost. Last year 4.5 trillion dollars of the US's 14 trillion dollar GDP was funded by increasing private debt. Stop that growth of debt and overnight 30% of the economy disappears.
The band has stopped playing, the music has stopped, but there's nowhere to sit down because we sold all the chairs when we thought we didn't need them.
Re:Shocking high (Score:2, Interesting)
Inaccurate.
According to this site [nationmaster.com] the average unemployment rate world-wide is 13.5%. The site cites the CIA World Factbook as its source.
Perhaps the 30% you were referring to is the statistic of combined unemployment and underemployment rate of many non-industrialized nations (found here [cia.gov]) ?
In that case: apples and oranges, friend.
Re:One question (Score:4, Interesting)
I know quite a few people that have moved back from the US and actually run pretty impressive IT outfits.
They all got their education states side and they moved back as soon as their finances allowed them to.
They live a pretty good life in India and I don't think there is any amount of money that would entice them to go back.
Re:While the workers suffer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Recession vs depression (Score:5, Interesting)
You said.
"Everything will shake out as it ALWAYS has - even right after the Great Depression, which gets more and more overrated as the years go by"
I would argue the opposite. We seem to minimize the great depression.
1. In all the charts for stock market performance, I NEVER see one that goes back to 1929. Hmmm
2. If you are talking about corrections, you cannot say "everything will shake out... even right after the great depression".
First, the correction was the 1929 stock market crash. Second, everything did not shake out, there were people who lived with hunger and poverty for 10+ years.
Third, many people lost everything. My grandfather lost about $250,000 when the financial institutions collapsed. He never recovered a cent.
Forth, it may have taken another decade to overcome if it hadn't been for the horrible war.
You KNOW the great depression was a CATASTROPHIC event. How can you tell? Look at the effect it had on the people who lived through it. They still waste NOTHING, and have a hard time throwing things out. Anything that has that effect on people 70 years later is serious.