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First of all, I am glad that people liked my views on the "Employment in Silicon Valley". I greatly appreciate the comments many of you shared with me. A few of them being: "To the point" "Well covered" "Great explanation of symptoms and origins of this problem that we are all facing" "It is all about the culture of innovation and leadership. Being the pioneers and not the settlers. .... Americans have that spirit of taking big risks for big rewards...." I can't thank enough to all of you who shared your comments. You have helped me add more to the previous article: I certainly agree that the Americans are leaders, innovators and that they believe in taking (huge) risk. There is no doubt about it. And it is only the risk takers who get rewarded in the longer run, as long as they can manage the risk.
That said, I am finding more and more Americans, left aside others, are moving that risk into other countries. What I mean is, the think tank is still in the USA, the risk takers are still in the USA, the innovation is still coming from us, but their execution happens to be moving to other developing and cost effective countries, as I mentioned in my previous article. Name any startup here in the valley that doesn't have a BRIC presence. May be a few. Rather, when a startup faces a VC, two of the questions they get asked are:
1) What is your mobile strategy & 2) What is your offshore strategy (do you have your presence in India, China, or ...)
(during the dot com days, it used be "What is you Sun and Solaris strategy) So, if the VCs are promoting "getting the work done somewhere else" culture, because a startup needs to stretch its funds, how can those jobs come back to the valley? Second point I'd like to make is that "culture of innovation" can be cultivated anywhere. If an Indian, a Chinese, a Brazillian, .... can innovate in the US, he/she can innovate in their homeland too. Isn't it? Over the last decade, a lot of reverse migration has happened. Indians, Chinese, Europeans who had moved to the Mecca of high tech innovation are now finding themselves making a U-turn - leading to migration of innovation to other countries. I remember, there was a time when the "R" word was restricted to only an only the US (should I say valley?), it was not allowed to move out of the US. The very same people are taking that "R" word to those cost effective countries to save money, to save cost. (R: research)
Third point, this month of October has been the month of reporting quarterly earnings by corporations. Most companies have reported better earnings and with revenues. So the question that comes up is, how are they able to raise their earnings without improving revenues. It is obviously due to cost cutting. Now, people may think that cost cutting is same as cutting (Rif'ing) people. No, it also means moving those jobs to cost effective countries.
NOTE: Please do not get e wrong. There is nothing wrong in saving on cost as part of the globalization. My view point is about its impact on our own valley
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