This is NOT news to anyone who lives here in Silicon Valley. I went to the market today and saw this headline on the San Jose Mercury News in the vending machine and wanted to share the online version with non-Silicon Valley DUers.
When the "dot com bubble" burst in this valley, it NEVER bounced back...not even frigging CLOSE to it. The people who had stabbed enough backs and cut enough throats (as well as a reduced, "legitimate" workforce) held on...everyone else was royally screwed.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/9866921.htmBattered by the technology bust, half of the Californians working in tech in 2000 have left the field, a new landmark study of 1 million workers shows.
Nearly one-fourth of the tech workers have taken non-technology jobs that often pay less, according to the study by the Sphere Institute, a Bay Area public policy research firm. Another 28 percent have fallen off California's job rolls altogether -- having fled the state, joined the ranks of the unemployed or become self-employed.
California's tech industry -- and Silicon Valley in particular -- has endured a wrenching and permanent transformation, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy.
``It's not Armageddon,'' said Levy, who will sit on a panel unveiling the study today at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. But, he added, ``An industry built up, and a lot of people got laid off. Tech may come back, but those firms that went bankrupt aren't coming back, and the big firms that laid off people to improve productivity aren't going to roll back productivity.'' Some former tech workers who have left the field aren't interested in coming back.
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