developer.* Blogs - A visit to Silicon Valley - Comments

Taschen Computer History Book

Daniel Read — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 06:18:35 -0800

Hi, Edward. I was re-reading this post of yours from awhile back since I had just made my first visit to Silicon Valley a couple weeks ago for SDWest. I found the same as Pswar, that the Valley appears to have awakened (if it was sleeping); there were crowds at the conference, and there appeared to be a lot going on business-wise in the area. (I got this sense listening to people talk around the conference, also.) On the other hand, I also found that a striking rich-poor dichotomy, which you allude to in your post.

What prompted me to post this comment, however, is the Taschen book computing history images that you mention. I believe this is the book:

The Computer. An Illustrated History

Looks like a winner. I'm going to order a copy from my friends at Ziesing Books (they can get anything I need, minus the Amazon discount, but they always wrap and ship with great care), and hopefully I'll have a review to post here soon. $30 US seems not a bad price for a 330+ book of this sort.

Dan

Job market

Edward G Nilges — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:02:22 -0800

I have heard the same from my former coworkers. The problem for me is in the type of jobs.

At one firm, a good product for generating Web skins over common code was intentionally destroyed because the developers were under such pressure to get the "skinned" code out for the client of the hour.

They were supposed to follow procedures to base the client look and feel on the common subdermis, but in fact they would copy all of the code of the common subdermis and modify until the client was all happy.

They did so in a sourly passive-aggressive context because they knew they were exponentially creating more and more work every day.

The problem, I think, is that the real estate market for renters and buyers creates a "floor" under the minimum realistic offer for a developer in the valley, and I think this floor is 100K.

Companies are willing to pay this because offshoring creates jobs (as I've said), but the "resource" becomes as expensive as a capital good which under the logic must work 24/7. The "resource" has no time to do things "right".

Whereas the low salaries "offshore" mean that truly interesting and creative work "offshore" can be funded for far less.

Now that my kids are grown, I'm like John Cusack in Say Anything. I don't wanna process anything, or work with anything processed. I don't wanna administrate no data bases nor no networks, and furthermore there are a lot of guys far more skilled at it than me.

I just wanna read Bjarne Stroustrup and write compilers. I don't even wanna make hot love to Iona Skye.

But the needs of younger developers are different. My advice is to avoid fancy real estate deals that require you and your sweetie to pay more than about 1/3 of combined net income. Suppose to pay for the war and my Social Security, Bush revokes the mortgage income deduction...or reduces it.

Can't happen? Don't bet on it. The costs of the war are not even properly reflected in the current budget and the middle class in America has already demonstrated that it can be screwed and will continue to vote Republican.

OK, just my opinion.

Not that bad

pswar — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 15:48:22 -0800

You are right, the home prices are outragious for sure here.
But job market here in the valley is not that bad. All of my friends who were looking for jobs landed jobs within weeks except one, it took 3 months for him because he is damn picky.

A visit to Silicon Valley

Edward G Nilges — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:02:34 -0800

I worked in Silicon Valley during its glory days, but today it's kinda sad. The home prices are outa sight but the job base is struggling to recover. There has been some improvement in the past year because OFFSHORING CREATES JOBS (dammit) but there still seems to be a lot of unused office space, etc.

I went to the Computer Museum in Mountain View, near the sweet-smelling salt flats in the old Silicon Graphics building. They have a super collection of Old Stuff.

Highlights, for me, include TWO 1401 mainframes (this an IBM midrange introduced in 1959 on which I learned machine and assembler programming in the early 1970s).