| April 2007 |
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| There are always good IT jobs in the Valley...if you know where to look |
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| Could it be that globalization is actually helping, rather than hurting, the high-tech hotbed of Silicon Valley? Absolutely, says the 2007 Silicon Valley Index, published by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network. The Valley is attracting more investment money, spawning new types of research, and welcoming more talented IT experts than ever before.
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For the year ending June 30, 2006, the report says, the Valley added 33,000 new full-time jobs, a 2.9% increase. Unemployment is way down. Co-patenting with foreign entities is on the rise, and venture capital is coming in from such locales as Britain, Taiwan, Israel and Singapore.
Today, the report says, Silicon Valley ranks number one worldwide in per-capita IT employment (Austin is second, Singapore third). It also ranks first in venture capital per capita. Even though there is less cash floating around than there was in the heady days of 1999, Silicon Valley pulls in more than a quarter of all U.S. venture capital ($5.2 billion from January through September 2006), with much of that money heading into biotech and clean tech efforts being launched by aggressive startups.
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| Silicon Valley ranks number one worldwide in per-capita IT employment |
| - 2007 Silicon Valley Index, published by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network |
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A report from international IT recruitment firm Greythorn describes it as a "gravitational pull for companies and workers worldwide, particularly those who use, produce, or support technology.” The report goes on to say that "As the labor-short market intensifies, companies continue to tolerate the high costs of doing business in California in exchange for a strong and talented workforce."
As Jack Amato, a test engineer for Visto Inc., puts it, "There are a lot of great opportunities right now. I would advise people to take advantage of them. It seems like the days of the dot-com may not be dead after all. Lately, I've been hearing 'Yeah, it's a good opportunity, and with the money they are offering, I can't turn it down.'” That's certainly nice to hear. Amato's best guess as to what the next big thing may be: wireless VoIP. "It's going to be the next prosumer bandwagon," he says.
Overall, technology employment is up for the first time since the dot-com bust. Unemployment in Santa Clara County is down from 4.4% in December 2005 to 4.2% in December 2006.
IT staffing consultancy Robert Half Technology, whose second-quarter IT Hiring Index was just released, finds that 19% of San Francisco CIOs plan to make new hires this quarter (the survey doesn’t break out Silicon Valley separately).
According to Sean Norris, branch manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies, "It's been a so-so year so far. We haven't seen an immediate spike in jobs yet this year like we have in years past, but we have seen a strong push in the full-time hiring market." Norris cites software development, Web 2.0 development, financial services and banking, and biotech as the hottest Valley sectors. Demand is heaviest for: .NET developers, software developers, business analysts, project managers, QA experts, desktop support experts, data warehousing experts and interface developers.
Out in the real world, Adobe Systems, recently named one of Fortune magazine's top ten companies to work for and a member of Business 2.0 magazine's fastest-growing companies list, currently has 128 jobs listed at its San Jose headquarters, everything from quality engineers and software developers to security experts and technical analysts.
At Dice, the total number of Silicon Valley job listings has rebounded somewhat from a fourth-quarter fall off; it's up 15% for the first quarter, and the jobs tend to come with salaries that are appropriate for a region that's notorious for its high cost of living. In the 2006 Dice Salary Survey, the Silicon Valley region was found to pay the highest average IT salary in the nation, $90,310, up 5.71% over 2005.
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| Dice job postings in Silicon Valley are up 15% since Dec. |
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