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Saturday, November 15, 2008

 

Tech Slump

From Cisco to Twitter the digital economy is contracting. The New York Times reports that the even the go-go tech sector is feeling the pain of the recession. Demand is collapsing, cuts are being made, stock prices are falling and jobs are being lost. Even Google's stock is dropping. This sudden down turn shows that the tech sector is not immune from the pain of the rest of the economy. According to the Times:

"the tech sector finds itself at the mercy of a double-barreled slump in both corporate and consumer spending caused by the housing decline and the economic crisis on Wall Street. Technology companies are also feeling the effect of frozen credit markets as business and government customers struggle to finance computer and software purchases that can run to millions of dollars."

William T. Coleman III, "a Silicon Valley veteran who founded the software maker BEA Systems and is now chief executive at a start-up called Cassatt," is quoted as saying that the industry "never seen anything like this in history." Some are comparing it to the Dot Com crash of 2000.

Despite the downturn, the giants of the tech sector as still flush with cash when compared to Wall Street firms. According to Coleman the difficulties faced by smaller competitors will provide an opportunity for mergers and acquisitions. The big will get bigger and the weak will be consolidated: According to Coleman: “The guys that aren’t as strong will be good pickings."

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posted by A. Mattson @ 6:49 AM 0 comments permalink

Monday, October 08, 2007

 

More jobs to India


Are all our tech jobs going overseas to poorer and impoverished nations? Yeah, they are. Why? Well Americans are lazy I believe and we don’t feel that we are behind technology wise, but in fact we are. And if we do not get our act together, there may come a time when we may need to move out of this country to get the best and highest paying jobs.

“ACCORDING to a confidential memorandum, I.B.M. is cutting 13,000 jobs in the United States and in Europe and creating 14,000 jobs in India. From 2000 to 2015, an estimated three million American jobs will have been outsourced; one in 10 technology jobs will leave these shores by the end of this year. Stories like these have aroused a primal fear in the Western public: that they might soon need to line up outside the Indian Embassy for work visas and their children will have to learn Hindi” (Suketu Mehta)

If you have ever called up Dell for tech assistance and got someone on the phone who speaks English but with some kind of Indian accent, then you should already know where the jobs are going. And wail these aren’t the big time tech jobs that Americans would want; they are a solid starting point. Technical assistance is always needed for PC’s and Servers and companies like IBM and Dell are outsourcing more and more jobs. They don’t have to pay as much and they get the same service from there employees. India is not a super power like the United States; in fact 40% of India’s population is illiterate and lives below the poverty line.

But in Bangalore, property is selling high and people have jobs and the tech businesses is booming. It is a sharp contrast from one section of India to another.

“Over the last quarter century, as hundreds of corporations have moved in to take advantage of Bangalore's temperate and dust-free climate, cheap housing, and work force educated in information technology (or IT, the popular shorthand here), economic growth has bred a new set of woes. In that time, the city has quadrupled in size, real estate prices have quintupled, and a once gracious metropolis has begun to choke on its own pollution and gridlock” (Richard Rapaport)

Sounds familiar, it sounds like any major US city during the industrial revolution. And this is India’s revolution, it’s not industrial but technical and many US industries and companies are helping by outsourcing jobs there.

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posted by S. Colgan @ 11:28 PM 1 comments permalink

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