Entries Tagged 'Silicon Valley' ↓

This is a topic my husband and I have discussed numerous times since his parents packed up, sold and gave away practically everything,  and became missionaries. Now that we are expecting a baby we are considering it further.  If we were to move we would probably go to our house in Chino Hills, and here is a list of pros and cons that came up in our discussions.

First, I think the biggest thing that I have kvetched about is the cost of living here in the Bay Area.  My husband and I both feel some of the nesting instinct now and he really wants his kid to grow up in a nice house with a backyard, like the one he grew up in. I think it is  reasonable to wish that  your child’s life to be as good or even better than yours.   To have a house comparable to the one we have in Chino Hills we would need over a million dollars here.  The school district in Chino Hills has elementary and middle schools with API scores over 900, and that kind of scores also give real estate a further premium here in the Bay Area. The amount of mortgage we pay on the Chino Hills home is less than our rent for a two bedroom apartment here, and it just seems ridiculous that we cannot reasonably afford the same quality of life here in the Bay Area even though we have above average incomes.

We both expect that we will not make as much money down south.  There just aren’t that many high tech companies there, and the unemployment rate in the Inland Empire is much higher than here in the Silicon Valley right now.  However, we are both pretty talented and graduated from the top engineering programs in the nation so we are pretty confident we will find something.  Chino Hills is also situated right on the border of Orange County so there are job opportunities there.  Of course, we will try to find jobs there before we decide to leave.

There are some  circumstances that could keep us in the Bay Area forever. One big thing is family.  Right now pretty much all of our family members live within an one hour drive and having that support system is quite valuable. We also have more friends here in the Bay Area than in Southern California.     Also, if we cannot find reasonable employment down south then we would probably just stay here.  The hubby also likes the weather here a lot more, but Southern California is actually sunnier and I prefer that more.

Anyway, we are not planning to move right now or even right after the baby is born.  The hubby is thinking of making a decision on this sometime before the kid enters elementary school so it may happen in five years, or not at all. I am definitely all for moving to a  higher quality of life if possible.  Meanwhile I am also working on generating a good non-salary income so that we can go wherever we want to.

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Today I randomly stumbled onto a blog called My Wife Quit Her Job.  It is written by a guy named Steve.  He happens to be a fellow startup engineer  in the Silicon Valley who started an online store with his wife.  On his site he writes about how he and his wife worked on replacing her considerable income while she was pregnant so that she could quit her job for good to be a stay at home mom.

What this couple did was to start an online store that sells wedding linens with optional personalized embroidery, and they are now having revenues in the six figures.   The blog covers many topics including driving traffic to their store, their motivation for starting the store, and how they learned from their mistakes.  They also have a collection of funny customer stories.

I sat here and read this site for hours, and it kind of made me want to resurrect my retail “businesses” again.  In the past I have sold used books and jewelry to varying degrees of success.  I could definitely identify with some of the things Steve wrote.  Basically, you cannot just sit on your butt and hope for money to roll in with a business with actual inventory.  Also, customers can be quite demanding and and unreasonable sometimes.

I could easily start selling used books again, but it takes quite a bit of time, and the income is not passive because I have to list each individual book and ship them when they sell.  The profit margins were quite decent, but I gave it up because it just took too much time.  Right now, I am seriously pursuing writing as a side business

I would definitely quit my job if I could replace my income.  I am taking it slow and I am nowhere as successful as some bloggers who have expanded their blogs very quickly in a short amount of time, but I consider myself a plodder and I am happy with the progress I have achieved.

A little over a year ago I wrote this post detailing how much I am earning by blogging, and the grand total for January 2008 was $161.  I am happy to report that for February 2009 I have a grand total of $1016 for the month from all of my blogs and this is about 6.3 times my earning last year.  This is nowhere near my job income, but I am hoping that I could get there eventually.  I have added new streams of income including eHow and affiliate links and every little bit adds up.

I highly doubt that next February I would be earning 6.3 times of $1016 a month from writing alone, but maybe one day I will also be a wife that quit her job.

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Today I read an article subtitled “Could Silicon Valley become another Detroit?” Essentially it is a warning from the executives of HP about how the government’s lack of investment in science and technology could spell the doom of America. A senior fellow at HP Labs named Stan Williams saw first hand that countries like India and China are investing billions in research while America is spending billions on bailouts for failed companies. Here is what I have experienced in this matter.

One thing that stuck out to me is that the reporter pointed out in Williams’ lab, “only 18 of the 75 scientists were born in the United States, and 10 of those American-born researchers are over 50 years old; only six are under the age of 35.” My experience in the Valley is that many people who work in high tech are foreign nationals and most of these people are either Chinese or Indian. So where are all the Americans? I think the problem is really quite complex and is a mixture of culture and the basic fact of population. First of all, the popular American culture is not nearly as obsessed with higher education as Asian countries like China, India, and Japan. In China you are pretty much expected to get at least a Master’s degree and it doesn’t surprise me that China invests a lot in its education system. In America kids are mostly taught that they could be anything they want, and that is a good thing.  However, most kids just want to be popular and accepted, and being a science geek will not win any social points. This is not to say that Americans do not value education, but a major problem is that higher education can be prohibitively expensive in this country. Even public schools cost tens of thousands of dollars a year and I am sure a lot of capable students are just priced out. Recently there was a report measuring higher education affordability and only California got a passing grade of C- for its large system of cheap community colleges. Finally, the irrefutable fact is that the total population of Chinese and Indians in the world is about seven times the population of Americans so there is a much larger talent pool to choose from. When you couple that with the fact that most Chinese and Indians are ingrained to study math and science from birth, it is really no surprise that there are less American scientists.

The good news for America is that there are still plenty of foreign nationals who are willing to live in this country and contribute to its economy. I am one of them, but I’m not sure how long America will stay as attractive as a golden mountain of opportunity and freedom. A lot of graduate students my age that come from China these days are going back to China after they graduate because they believe that China has more opportunities than America. As the article noted, Williams saw that in China a 28 year old recent graduate was able to get a $5 million research grant from the government for her research, but here in America a professor would have a hard time raising $50,000. Additionally, a major issue preventing foreign talent from staying is the draconian and frankly bizarre immigration system in America. It takes years for a foreign national to win legal rights to stay in this country, and while they wait they are often treated like criminals or indentured servants. For many brilliant young scientists, this crazy immigration system is really not worth the trouble. They can go back to their own countries and have all the rights of a citizen and make a difference for their people, so why should they go through the gauntlet here? This loss of foreign talent is an incredible waste for America because many of these students get fellowships and are trained by American companies and schools, but end up bringing all the things they learned back to their own countries. If the immigration system were easier on talent then I am sure more people will consider staying.

So will Silicon Valley become Detroit? I highly doubt that will happen in this generation because this area is still buzzing with innovation and there are also many immigrants here who have made America their home and they will continue to contribute. I know that there are people who hate us for having these high tech jobs here, but we would not have these jobs if there were enough qualified Americans. I do believe that America has to get serious about education and training in science to stay competitive in the world, and it has to start as soon as possible. I think the $39 billion pledged in the new stimulus package to upgrade schools around the country is a good start, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money that went to failed companies recently. Will the American government ever learn to truly invest in the future long term?

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P.S. Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

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Yesterday Google announced that they are laying off a quarter of their recruiting staff and also closing down several offices and less popular services. This of course made all the major news outlets because Google is supposed to be recession proof. Here are my thoughts and experiences on the matter.

First of all, it sucks to be one of those people losing his or her job, but seriously, Google’s whole recruiting department has a bad reputation in the Silicon Valley. Google recruiters are known to be very unprofessional and haughty. I have heard tons of stories where Google recruiters wasted people’s time by rescheduling interviews or doing a switch and bait on the job. Their recruiting process is intentionally vague to hold up the exclusiveness of Google, but that is also unprofessional because job seekers need to know what they are going to do. I think they treat people like crap during the whole recruiting process because they assume that everyone wants to work at Google, and that turns a lot of people off. Funnily enough my friend who works at Google actually hated the recruiting experience he went through, and when he heard that these recruiters were laid off he cheered a little.

Another thing that many people have said about Google is that they do not need more than 20000 people to run its business. Our CEO said this week that “Google just hires a bunch of PhDs that do not know how the real world works.” That is why they have so many weird projects that start up and then shut down. Also, they have a lot of redundancy in the various services they offer and that is just wasteful. The way Google operates is extremely inefficient, and pretty much everyone knows it. Seriously I don’t know why their shareholders haven’t protested the way Google operates because if they trimmed all the useless stuff and focused on their core business then I wouldn’t be surprised if their earning per share were $20 instead of $4 to $5.

Anyway, I am hoping that Google becomes more serious about its business and announce more layoffs. It would be painful for those laid off, but maybe they will start something new and make the Valley more interesting. Google is so last century.

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Recently I read several articles about the mass exodus from California in the past four years.    It’s really not a surprise to me because I have seen the rapid rise in cost of living, taxes, and unemployment in the past few years.  Combine that with a state government that is in constant turmoil and you have a very stressful and unstable situation to be in. However, is the California dream really dying?

In my mind, the California dream is much more glamorous and adventurous than the so called “American Dream”.   For example, every Chinese person I know still calls San Francisco “Old Gold Mountain” because of the Gold Rush.  The gold ran out, but the legend of sailing halfway around the world to California for treasure still remains. The dot com bubble burst, but some lucky few still made out like bandits and new entrepreneurs are still trying to strike it rich in the Silicon Valley.  The California dream gives people high expectations to become the richest or the most famous, but it also dishes out  big disappointments. The fact of the matter is that most people cannot attain the California dream.  Not everyone can become a movie star, and not everyone can be a dot com millionaire.

I have lived in California for almost 12 years now and I have seen both of my parents’ next door neighbors move out of state.  One of the families sold their home for a dandy profit and headed up to Oregon, and the other packed up to go to Washington.  Now my inlaws have packed up and left for the Philippines after living here for over 23 years and raising two children.  Honestly I am a little jealous, and a little curious as to if they love where they are now, but I think they have achieved their goals in California.

There are a lot of things about this state that I love even though sometimes I am so frustrated by all the things going wrong.  I love the innovative energy in the Silicon Valley, and the mostly sunny skies.  I love the diversity of people here and the availability of cuisines from all over the world.  This is also the state where I got a pretty decent college education even though my parents paid for it through tuition and oodles of taxes.  California is where I grew from a child into an adult, and for better or worse it is  a part of who I am.

It is very unlikely that I will leave California since pretty much my entire immediate family is here.  My husband is adamant that he would probably never leave California since he has lived here since he was two and my parents have worked pretty hard to be here.  This is home, and it is messy and screwed up, but it is still home. I am pretty sure it is going to get worse, but I also think that the innovations of Californians will make this the place to be once again. The California dream will live on because everyone dreams of a life beyond the ordinary, but perhaps right now it doesn’t seem like California is the best place to realize that dream.

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