Is the San Jose area (Silicon Valley) recession proof?

[TheGreatCurve]

Originally Posted by 80skeys

LOL.... so your gauge of a healthy economy is when psychic recruiters contact anonymous unemployed people who have not posted any resume or online profile ...

No, I'm saying there are a lot of unemployed people who previously worked in high-tech but are having a very difficult time finding jobs in the Bay Area, some for years. A gainfully employed person getting calls from headhunters in not a good gauge of how many people are unemployed.

A super model getting hit on by lots of men is not a good gauge of how many unattractive women are not getting any attention at all from men.

[TheGreatCurve]

Originally Posted by EdJS

No, actually I didn't contact them, except in the sense that I changed my status on my Linked In page.

Well, there you go. You indicted to the world that you were looking for a new job. I was referring to people who are not looking for a new job getting calls from headhunters.

[dmode]

I for one believe that the valley is evolving towards becoming recession proof. And the reason for that is the distributed nature of software. Recessions are often geographical and constrained within certain economies. The 2007 meltdown provides a great example.

While the US and European economies contracted, China and India continued to grow above 7%. This enabled the software companies to continue to build and ramp up their operations despite the terribly sluggish US economy. Unlike manufacturing and consumer goods, the software companies often don't require to be near their customers. So even though Google has good penetration in India, their core engineer, design and strategy groups can be scaled up in Mountain View. Software tailoring to local markets are limited and are often just plain translation of English text. This is in contrast to consumer goods, where intense local market knowledge is critical to the success of the product

[cardinal2007]

Originally Posted by dmode

I for one believe that the valley is evolving towards becoming recession proof. And the reason for that is the distributed nature of software. Recessions are often geographical and constrained within certain economies. The 2007 meltdown provides a great example.

While the US and European economies contracted, China and India continued to grow above 7%. This enabled the software companies to continue to build and ramp up their operations despite the terribly sluggish US economy. Unlike manufacturing and consumer goods, the software companies often don't require to be near their customers. So even though Google has good penetration in India, their core engineer, design and strategy groups can be scaled up in Mountain View. Software tailoring to local markets are limited and are often just plain translation of English text. This is in contrast to consumer goods, where intense local market knowledge is critical to the success of the product

I think that in the last 20 years the developing countries have been growing quickly, but there are certainly cases like 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, 1997 Asian financial crisis, Argentine economic crisis 1999-2002, but they for the most part have become more stable, but the economies, and states in these places were not as stable in the 1980s and we could get back to that, I don't think drawing money from around the world is enough to be recession proof, it has certainly worked that way the last 10 years though. I also think there can be bubbles in tech, and busts as people over invest in some areas before they mature, and the weak disappear later when the growth is not super astronomical, and the best companies squeeze out the competition. I think we are probably more diverse than during the dot-com bubble, but a new bubble could suck up resources from other tech enterprises, leading to too many people working on a certain submarket. There could be a bubble in social for example as people try to make the next social network to compete with FB, or at least in order to get bought out for $1B, and then when that doesn't materialize the money would dry up, and a lot of these companies fold, granted if that happened today the Apples and Googles would have their recruiters attempt to take all the talent from the fallout.

[80skeys]

Originally Posted by cardinal2007

I think that in the last 20 years the developing countries have been growing quickly, but there are certainly cases like 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, 1997 Asian financial crisis, Argentine economic crisis 1999-2002, but they for the most part have become more stable, but the economies, and states in these places were not as stable in the 1980s and we could get back to that, I don't think drawing money from around the world is enough to be recession proof, it has certainly worked that way the last 10 years though.

The fact that the entire world are consumers of Apple iphones and tons of other technologies coming out of the valley certainly bodes well for the foreseeable future ... I think ....

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by dmode

I for one believe that the valley is evolving towards becoming recession proof.

I think that's extremely naive of you. With wealth accumulating more and more in the hands of a small global elite, there are a relative handful of people who can tip much of the global economy (or at least the developed economies) into recession almost any time they want. Have we learned nothing from 2008?

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I think that's extremely naive of you. With wealth accumulating more and more in the hands of a small global elite, there are a relative handful of people who can tip much of the global economy (or at least the developed economies) into recession almost any time they want. Have we learned nothing from 2008?

Well, all we have to do is give all our money to the extremely rich, and they'll get us all great jobs.




Right.....?