The Journal says… Silicon Valley is still hot
An article from the Wall Street Journal is saying that Silicon Valley is (again) the place for “High Skilled” workers. It’s a bit of a fluff piece, but there are some good bits of information.
Silicon Valley’s changing employment makeup does have its downside. Wages are once again creeping up, making it more expensive to do business in the already pricey area. Average annual pay in Silicon Valley hit $69,455 in 2005, up 2.7% from 2004, though it remains below the heights of the average $80,000-plus that the region’s workers earned in 2000, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
It’s a bit of a mishmash covering companies from Google (hot) to Palm (turbulent) to HP (were great). This is great news for job seekers, but it does not that “lower skilled” jobs including entry level type positions are being moved out of the area. I have seen this trend a bit, and it is troublesome.
Companies get into the loop of thinking “gotta hire good, experienced people to get to market faster.” However, in today’s environment (where you’re lucky if you get 5 years out of someone) you need to make sure you are reloading your engineers with young guns.