Fareed Zakaria Waxes On About Canada 1
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Fareed Zakaria swooning over Canada. I do think he paints an overly sunny picture and he starts making it sound like almost anything Canadian is inherently great (which I’ll claim is true to my American friends, but amongst ourselves Canadians know better), but the gist of his points are true. Honestly, I think a hybrid of what the US has and Canada has would be a great idea. Have the core of your banking system be large, boring, heavily regulated banks with very conservative leverage ratios; then allow for experimentation and risk taking in separate financial institutions, with the open acknowledgment that these institutions are inherently less reliable. When you think about it, that picture isn’t too far off from where the US was just over a decade ago. Hmmm….
How Bad Is The Tech Job Market Right Now? 1
The headline is Recession hits Silicon Valley as layoffs pile up and yet it fails to fully capture how the landscape has changed so rapidly in the last half a year. I was looking at my career options back then and was shocked to find just how much demand there was in the market. It seemed like the R word wasn’t going to ever be spoken in the tech sector. A few months ago, I was calling friends at Yahoo and other places, and trying to convince them to come work with me. While I wasn’t entirely unsuccessful, it was a non-trivial argument to make (which based on what you read in the press would seem impossible at least for Yahoos). This month…
…I get pings from people I’ve worked with, people I barely remember, and even recruiters. The latter show a shocking amount of compassion/desperation. I actually had a recruiter call me up today and offer to hand me a resume even though he knew we don’t work with outside agencies to keep our costs down, and so there could not be any compensation in it for him (and yes, this gesture will undoubtedly pay dividends when this mess comes to an end, but he has to know that may be a long way off and I’m sure he is as desperate to bring home the bacon right now as anyone). I’ve never seen a recruiter do something like that before. Not even during the .com bust years. THAT is how bad it is.
Hang on to your horses everyone, this is going to be a very bumpy ride… since we’re in LA you may choose to think of it as an economyquake. ;-)
Save The World
As long as we’re looking at house resolutions, you should probably look at this one (am I the only one a little disturbed to know that our congress is building its drafts on the “O” drive and appears to still be conforming to DOS 8.3 style filenames?!). I mean it just involves more of your money than you’ve probably spent on your mortgage/rent lately, and it may be the only hope you have of keeping said roof over your head… or it could just be an unmitigated disaster.
In Your Face ComScore
Man, I so wanted to say something when ComScore’s initial report came out, but my insider status (barely insider really) makes it dangerous. So, it is with great joy that I let c|net do the talking for me.
I Feel So Much Better Now
Morgan Stanley has a piece of reassuring news for everyone. Strap yourselves in kids, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!