Let’s run run run to virtualization! Hey, what happened to VMWare and their own virtual environment on the launch of Fusion 3.0? Their virtual platform (if they were using their own “dogfood”, crashed and burned.) Why no coverage of that?

Let’s run run run to cloud computing! Oops, Gmail is down. Oh noes Amazon Elastic Cloud is down. Yeah put your assets in a third parties hands–bright choice. Kinda like the choice to outsource all your knowledge workers to third party firms. All that labor saved goes straight to the executives in the form of stock grants, executive bonuses and golden parachutes.

The only way they can see to boost their bottom line is to layoff people or outsource them so that Wall Street looks favorably on them and raises their stock prices. In return, Wall Street pays out huge bonuses to itself for short term thinking.

There is more worse news on the economy, it is not just the commercial real estate that is going to come crashing down, it is all the firms that were bought by leveraged buyouts that are next. And they will cause a new wave of unemployment as well, which will ripple through the economy. All these LBOs were based on loading up the acquired companies with debt. But fear not, wall street banks will do fine.

its a bear market counter-rally, thats all, and its probably over

I suspect that:
1. the dramatic rise in smartphone sales is creating opportunities for smartphone app developers.
2. the movement toward cloud computing is creating opportunities for web app developers.
3. the movement toward “green” technology is creating “green tech” jobs.
4. …

Technology shifts are normal. Being a vacuum tube designer was probably exciting, until the transistor came along.

Companies & workers need to adjust to new market realities.

- The uncertain tech funding environment (VCs have to take into consideration that not all their LPs will respond to capital calls)
- The upcoming rise in capital gains taxes (2010 Bush tax cut expiration)
- The potential of health “reform” to raise the cost of coverage paid by employers (see what happened in Mass, Maine, Tennesee, and Hawaii when they had politicians control what coverage was mandated in insurance policies)
- The possibilty of Cap and Trade to raise the costs of doing business (hint: those datacenters use a lot of energy)

Here in New Mexico we have solar tech companies from India to California building facilities. Hewlett-Packard has already held 2 job fairs for a tech support center under construction.

There’s more. Just read beyond sfgate.com.

its a bear market counter-rally, thats all, and its probably over

Well, duh? Because the “recovery” is fraud. All you have to do is look at the raw numbers to see that.

1. Mergers and acquisitions
2. Rapid changes in core markets
3. *Technological advances that reduce staffing needs

It is this 3rd point that cannot be overlooked. There are some major players out there that rival long established, global corporations yet they have less than 50 employees total. Things like virtualization, the cloud, low cost CMS’, vastly improved development frameworks, etc.

As with all shifts however, we’ll see brand new core markets open up with new and unexpected competition in areas that are not yet realized. This will sprout up new jobs, and it will happen almost suddenly once the crumbling dust settles.

Companies with long term vision see this coming and are making their moves on the staffing chess board accordingly.

1. The information technology industry, in total, is maturing. Remember, at one point trains and air travel were “high-tech”. At some point innovation in certain areas starts to reach ceilings. There are always new opportunities (phone apps as an example), but the new opportunities often don’t fully replace the others that are moving to sunset status.

2. The continued move of innovation to lower-cost employment centers in emerging economies continues unabated (as discussed ad nauseum by the Friedmans of the world).

3. Technology companies are becoming perpetually more efficient by consuming their own dog-food. We all talk about great things like Software as a Service (i.e. Salesforce, Google Docs, etc), but we don’t really examine these shifts as having significant economic (meaning jobs) impacts. Using managed software services means less IT folks internally to manage, less consultants for implementation, and so on down the line to the developer.