The focus of my last post was on whether or not I believe Silicon Valley has inflated like a 1999 bubble. I don’t think it has, but the stock valuations are still pretty high. If I were to guess, I’d say the apparent investment upswing is a byproduct of cash sitting on the sidelines. Investors have it and big companies have it. Investors plant the seeds and companies like Google buy the fruit at the first sign of flowering.
Silicon Valley is an interesting place though. Many of the companies there don’t want to be viewed as uncool. Once that happens it means a particular culture has set in. Which of these companies seem more exciting: Facebook or Yahoo? Google or Microsoft? You get the picture.
Earlier this week there was an article on cnn.com in the Tech section about the hiring on Silicon Valley. Here are some quotes and stats from the article “Silicon Valley experiencing new hiring boom” by Dan Simon:
- Silicon Valley: 10.6% unemployment rate
- Last month’s (March 2011) national average was 8.8%
- Silicon Valley produced 1,200 jobs last month and expected to add thousands more in 2011.
- According to SimplyHired.com, a search engine for job listings:
- nearly 40% of 130,000 open positions in Silicon Valley are for software engineers
- Since July of 2009 there’s been a 245% increase in openings that have “Facebook” as a keyword
- Over the same time period, a 421% increase in “Twitter” job postings
- Innovations in social media, mobile and cloud computing are driving the growth, said Dion Lim, SimplyHired’s president.
- LinkedIn, the social-networking site for professionals, hired nearly 500 workers last year — almost doubling its workforce.
- “As we grow the company, we’re always on the lookout for top talent,” said Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s CEO.
Working Thoughts 