[TriLUG] New member re-location question

[John Franklin]

On Friday, Jun 13, 2003, at 09:17 US/Eastern, Chris Magnus Hedemark 
wrote:
> The sudden loss of IT jobs in this country is at least partly 
> attributable to jobs moving to countries with cheap labor, like India 
> or China.  When I was at a big blue company a few years back I saw 
> jobs moving to India that used to be in Raleigh.  Maybe part of it was 
> caused by IT guys hopping from job to job every 6 to 18 months in 
> pursuit of higher pay, and employers scrambling to retain talent as 
> long as they could.  Loyalty in the workplace is *gone*, with blame 
> falling on both sides of the employee/employer relationship.

Watching the movie last night made me realize a few things.  Linus was 
asked, "Do you feel like you've lost out on the millions of wealth that 
Linux has generated?" (or something like that.)  And Linus responded, 
"No, I'm happy that I and all these people who like to do Linux stuff 
can get jobs doing it." (or something like that.)

First, I realized is that Linux and Open Source software for a while 
was an economic growth package the likes of which any Governors, 
legislatures, and Presidents would jump at the chance to set up.  Linus 
managed to do it, without intending to.  But it burned very brightly 
and could not be sustained.  While it burned, a lot of people got 
trained in IT, people who had no formal training.  I know off-hand of 
two excellent network administrators who's college degrees had nothing 
to do with IT.  One was history, the other sociology.  If/when they get 
laid off, they don't often go back to their degrees.  Maybe IT gets in 
your blood.

Second, the pushing of VC companies to invest in Open Source companies 
and their reluctance to do so... Joel on Software has a fantastic 
article on VC companies and how they work -- from the companies 
point-of-view.  When I showed it to a VC friend of mine, he mentioned 
that some of the things are correct, some are not.  Yes, it works out 
that 7 of 10 fail, 2 of 10 are marginally successful, and the last is 
The Big One.  But they don't invest with that expectation.  Every one 
they invest in is one they expect will be The Big One.  The one that 
they cash out of in five years with enough to fund another 10 or 20.

Once they've invested, the VC's job is risk management.  They're not 
looking to add as much risk as possible to the venture.  If they do 
something that seems risky and dumb to the rest of the company, it's 
not because they want to have one of the 7 failures, it's because they 
see things differently.  They see the risky thing as a reasonable 
gamble, or an opportunity.  Maybe they know something you don't.  Maybe 
you know something they don't.

Oh, and this precludes whatever the equivalent of "paper MSCEs" are in 
the VC world.  As with any profession, some of them are simply 
incompetent.  Can you tell the difference?

At any rate, today as an industry they've scaled waaay back the level 
of risk they're willing to manage.  They're still in the business of 
making money by investing in companies, but they've learned to be 
leery.  Stock prices that explode on opening day, then a year later are 
worth less than 1% of their high?  Not what they consider one of their 
successes, even if the company is still around today.

And yet there are those that no one quite figures to be worth investing 
in.  The canonical example: Pez dispensers.  eBay started off as a site 
for buying and selling Pez dispensers.  Who could envision what it 
would become?  If the guy that started it went to some VC people and 
said, "I want to get people to sell Pez dispensers online."  Well, 
would you have invested in it?  Would you have thought, "Yes, sell Pez 
dispensers online, and maybe a town in California."

Third, when Richard Stalman was talking about the admins not sharing 
and the punishment he effected, I immediately thought of the Sports 
Night where Dan (half of the on-air talent) didn't tell Natalie (the 
associate producer) something -- didn't share -- and when she found out 
there was "punishment."  She had wardrobe withhold their pants until 
the first commercial break.

jf
-- 
John Franklin
franklin at elfie.org
ICBM: 35°43'56"N 78°53'27"W