Which is why I am scoping other career options.

We are great at what we do ... or not in my case as I feel horrible about my pissed off users who email me all the time wondering why it takes 2 weeks to fix there fucking computer when I only do IT stuff now 4 hours a day. FYI I have 36 open tickets I need to solve in 4 hours a day in 1 - 2 week time frame. Many require me to ship units to HP for service or an executive is out of town on a trip or something. 36 was manageable if I worked 8 hours previously but man my boss is not going to be happen tomorrow morning with 4 tickets more than 2 weeks old where I didn't have time to get them done :-(

That or I will be fired soon for being the cost center and not that valuable anyway.

Many of these older folks got screwed over when the stock market crashed and switched to bonds and gold and are being screwed over royally again as other investors buy stocks again.

Most I know can't retire and are forced to work as taking social security at 62 doesn't pay the mortgage. You were responsible and probably lucky as well. Most never got a big paying job or invested in some housing and lost everything in 2008. That is more common as older folks have more saved money to do things like invest in real estate.

But for the younger workers ....
I think jobs will come back from China to the US. Apple is doing this right now. The reason is price of gas. As fuel and wages go up not to mention risk (what if China sides with North Korea in a war with South Korea) the cost benefit goes away. When gas hits $4.50 a gallon the savings will go away as a single cargo ship uses as much as 50,000 cars worth of gas a year!!

Supply Chain improvements and just in time inventory systems depend on everything being close together and that is hard when you now have a supply chain half way across the world and need 2 warehouses for each continent and long lead time to get it to the retail when a local competitor which is a startup can ship it within 24 hours and your wait time is 1.5 weeks for the same cost!

So who knows what is going to happen and it will be interesting to watch.

I saw a special on PBS on fairchild semi - conductor which came from Shockley when all his scientists and engineers rebelled and formed it as he was an asshole, racist, and a poor manager. Intel, Micron, and AMD came from there Fairchild which in return came from Shockley.All these different start ups fed from each other and customers who bought the chips wanted offices there close to where the manufacturing wise such as Atari. It was a booming industry with many players all offering partial ownerships in one spot. Most other industries did not operate like this where only the president owns the company and everyone else is an hourly employee before the 1960s.

It was cheap farmland which was a fraction of the cost of nearbye San Francisco and New York/New Jersey. There is UC at Berkeley, Stanford, UC @ San Fransisco and UC @ Davis. Not the MIT or Princeton of the northeast but there was young talent at all these universities and cheap cost of living and office space rentals back in the 1950s and 1960s. At least that is what was mentioned in the show as they wanted to go to San Fransisco but thought they could save cash by going to SV instead as there was nothing but empty land and farm fields.

  It was when these employees got rich through stock options did the value of housing inflate everything like it is today. I am sure the 1,000 facebook millionaires probably all quickly bought homes in order to flip for even more money. It is a bubble as most buyers are investors looking to make a buck.

Have you watched Shark Tank? Mark Cuban is on their and he has been featured a few times on this site as he owned some software companies. Basically if you want investor money they want 0 risk and a guaranteed HUGE return on their cash. Things those of us do not have access too.

Sure you can be in SF and NYC but what slashdotters do not tell you is no one is going to write you check ala 1999 for an idea on a napkin like in the old days. They want to see profit. I did not say revenue but cold hard cash in profit before they will even talk to you. If you are paying through the nose like 1 million a year for a shitty 1,300 square foot office in Silicon Valley that profit goes out the door and so do your investors. In 2013 you need proof and at least several other backers to show they will get their money back if they risk the cash to invest in your idea.

Cuban is in Dallas and is diversified in many areas. Not in San Francisco. Anyway this is getting off topic but if I were to start a farm a cold body of water would rock if I had the dough to create such a system. Lake Superior never gets above 52 degrees even on a hot day. This is because there is permafrost from the last ice age under its floor that hasn't all melted yet and chilly springs and very deep 1000 foot water that doesn't warm up until October. The problem with pipping in cool San Fransisco bay water is it is salt water and silty with dirt that corrodes metal unlike fresh water. I do not know how cold the Columbia river is to use in Easter Oregon?

I have seen jobs where they give you an IQ test and tell you they want a masters degree! Then hand you a headset to work at the call center and say "I am paying you $35,000 and not $22,000 a year/$10 an hour like the rest of call centers!! Why aren't you grateful to have a job?!"

That company just hired a bunch of Indians as they could not find any qualified workers.

The economy maybe improving but it is far far from the days of WWII or the 1990s. It maybe returning soon slowly but it will take a few years.

Older companies (as non .coms) are happy to hire such people when it is hard to find workers. It is the 20 somethings that think they are just as awesome as the those with +30 years extra experience like to swag around their d*ck size on being cool and feel threatened by those who worked there way up rather than had connections fresh out of school.

I think it is much less. Regular programmers are still hired. Where I work 80% are Indians but that is because the owners are friends with all the politicians and has friends in offices to get the H1B1s to them first.

Not everyone is like that and I feel not everyone is competent or awesome at their job. Having so many programmers to me means more weeds to sort to find the wheat. The wheat will jump ship too as they are in such high demand.

If I had more experience programming I would move to San Jose and I would be hired fast. Would you want to hire me? Of course not ... well at least not in that capacity but I would do it because it pays well.

The point is normal companies still hire the majority of programmers even with outsourcing and not just Silicon Valley .coms. Many are more experience and have a home which is why they are not there and these are the ones you want that are good at their jobs without paying 100k+ a year.

California is a bubble that is popping.

For this reason when I start me .com I will not be based in California. I can get someone to work for less than half in Fargo and in Texas. Austin and Dallas are growing with new startups. South by Southwest is showing that and a market correction is beginning.

Old timers will tell you Silicon Valley started because it was dirt cheap land, wages, lower taxes, than the more popular New York City and New Jersey of IBM, GE, and Bell Labs of the 1960s high tech hub. Now the opposite is true.

Why go in California? Synergy my ass! Not everyone has a few million in cash sitting in the bank and even if I did I could cut costs by 50% minimum by going to lower cost places. After all the odds of surviving after 2 years are small as it is. Lower costs will greatly increase the odds.

This will piss off some slashdotters but no one but an executive is worth $123,000 a year! Fuck that. Maybe a few sales people but that is it. I mean that is how much a MBA director or lawyer gets and it is not fair that a regular worker gets more to them. A programmer does not add that much value to deserve it frankly.

My employer doesn't care about quality. Only price.

I do desktop support and if I have a ticket you can expect to wait 2 weeks before I will bother to talk to you. I am doing hte work of previously 4 people and they cut my hours. I am a cost who doesn't add value to the shareprice.

Same is true with developers. So what if your code only works in ancient IE. It is cheaper and as long as it still works the users can work around the bugs and restart your app when it crashes etc.

There is no value in I.T. only cost accountants who can raise the shareprice so the CEO can keep his job. That is the goal of business. It is not to make money but have everlasting money and less and less costs to go with it to make those magical financial ratios look better for trading computer programs.

If you want to be respected become an accountant or get into sales. They are not a cost but a profit!

Trillions already has been stolen.

Look at where the wealth in the US is? That money didn't just magically leap into the middle class bank accounts to them did it?

I am not a socialist nor do I believe in class warfare but the savers in the top rich have gotten that money through tricks like using supercomputers to set the price of a share in a few millionths of a second. Basically if news or electronic trades of a company like Apple start coming in then your super computer below the stock exchange has a keen advantage of quickly selling shares to cash in. Or if Sysco just reported disapointing earning and the price is starting to go down you can quickly short the stock from other computer programs further away from the floor and still make money in a few millionths of a second.

Basically it would be like you see milk at the grocery store for $3.99 a gallon. A program sees you reach out for it and quickly raises the price to $4.50 a gallon and as soon as it magically goes back down to $3.99 a gallon. No matter how quick you are to grab the milk you get raped in a blink of an eye!

Sounds ludcrious but this is the debate about flash or HFT which is high frequency trading. The very top rich use fiber and and try to duke it out on who gets quicker latency in order to play these games. If someone beats you then you lose.

Yes Wall Street does own Trillions and about 3/4 of the money in the US while the rest of us fight for it. Mostly rich people with savings accounts. Simple math dictates that for someone to win someone else has to lose right?

I have a few thousand in my bank account right now. I can't afford anyone else. When things pick up I will first get a secretary. Then someone to help part time. Then a full time. Then hire a consultant instead of a fulltime employee etc.

Oh just go get some venture capitalists you say? Ha! Have you ever watched Shark Tank? If you do not have good profits ... notice I did not say revenue, but actual profits with exploding growth and 0% risk Mark Cuban wont even talk to you.

I do not have several million to spend and neither did Mark Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates, or anyone else. Investors would not talk to them without money first. After all who wouldn't want risk free guaranteed profit right?

I know it seems unrealistic but these big guys demand it because they have so much more cash than you or I.

So basically here is how it is going to work. I am dirt cheap and so are the other enterprenuers. I need a hosting service for the cheapest price, but with the uptime and staff needed. The 200k full time employee comes at the last stages after I have already proven to investors they will see their money back plus a return and the bank sees some assets it can seize if I do not pay by the end of the month. Yes it would be freaking awesome to hire an awesome guy right away to do it right, but that is not a reality.

A data center up there provides that and plus cutting costs raises the shareprice if I am already established so I can give myself a bonus. Yes, competition is brutal but at the end of the day better books with cheaper employees brings in more money for my salary and more investor money as they like see endless growth as they perceive as less risk by cutting costs.

Or explained even easier. It is cheap!

Also I may add the silicon industry was started by Mayfield semi conductor whom AMD, Intel, Micron, and others spawned from. They stayed there and formed what it is today.

They were laughed at as IBM and every other tech company was in New Jersey and New York. That was where real innovation was from etc. Investors thought NYC is where they should relocate for real engineering talent.

They started in Silicon Valley because it was very cheap and near SF. So likewise the new thinkers will come where it is cheaper like India or in Minnesota. Fiber is everywhere too expect in real rural areas.

"That is funny but their are good reasons. One do you have cheap Hydro power in Duluth? Fiber?"

Cheap land? Check.
Cold frigid body of water? Check
Cheaper workers? Check
Lower taxes? Check

The cost of land compared to California? Priceless!

I got into a debate 2 years ago when someone said you must be in the bay area if you are a young I.T. startup! I called that out as Bullshit! Unless you already have tens of millions of dollars sitting in your bank account. Texas is a much better deal. Those who hated Texas felt free to correct me but I gave a business reason. How much would an ok average software engineer cost in Austin? $55,000 a year. San Francisco? $90,000 a year. Rent for a tiny 15 person team in Austin? $80,000 a year. San Francisco $1,000,000! Taxes in California? 10%! Taxes about 2.5% etc.

See where I am coming from? It is stupid to start a business in the bay area. Synergy my ass. There is nothing magical about the bay area where you magically will have customers pay you money to offset the costs. Too many programmers for too little talent that can leave you in a heartbeat where my costs are 300% just to appear cool. It is a business my friend and I am just here to make money. Stop imitating others and start being different to get ahead.

Walmart beat all the nickel and dime stores like Woolsworth in NYC when they are in rural Arkansas to cut costs. When you have a shoe string budget starting out and your new investors want a profit by the end of the month Minnesota or Alaska sound like a much better option. When you talk to a financial guru they always advise to spec out your costs and triple them and then when you are done double them.

Of course not everyone has needs where the distance in the speed of light in just a few hundred yards in .00001 of a second means trillions of lost dollars stealing from the backs of hard working savers in manipulating the stock prices in buying and selling the same share at the same time to rip them off.

I would consider that a niche scenario where the backers of this own 90% of all the money anyway and don't mind the energy cost in terms of what they can manipulate back.