next question is, what’s the peak? my hypothesis is that it’d be less than the 9.1% of 2003. the 2003 cycle was the dotcom bubble, pinching the Valley harder than the rest of the industries and regions. since 2008 [...]]]> i wrote on my bold predictions about silicon valley’s unemployment forecast a while ago, concluding that

next question is, what’s the peak? my hypothesis is that it’d be less than the 9.1% of 2003. the 2003 cycle was the dotcom bubble, pinching the Valley harder than the rest of the industries and regions. since 2008 is more organic meltdown, and the volume of labor force hasn’t risen as much as it did last time (see chart below), the unemployment rate might top out at 8.25-8.5%.

and when would the good times roll again? based on the same theory of accelerated swings above, i’d say, a year from recovery that puts us into Oct-Dec 2010. apple (or may be google, facebook, whoever) probably would have a killer product for christmas, lifting us to a nice Jan 2011.

i am already way off on the peak unemployment, and we aren’t even done yet. a wall street journal report on silicon valley unemployment shows a bleak picture. here’s the money chart.

the theory of accelerated swings seems to be coming true, and the peaks are getting higher. so my guess is that when it does get better, it will get better quickly. but it still might be a few months before it starts to get better.

the story is not [...]]]> the feeding frenzy that began a year and half ago, never really stopped. yahoo had an asset that the goliath wanted., and the boys from redmond are too battle-tested, too tech-savvy, too much enamored with the bounty and too powerful for the resistance to hold up. you knew how this movie would end.

the story is not about the disembowelment of yahoo. i don’t blame the journo-types for feasting on the story. a proud internet giant taken down by the unstoppable force of the evil empire. it’s the star-wars type of a story that is there to be played. the CEO’s must guffaw. jobs will need to get lost. heartburn to be squelched. it’s a game, and we know how it is played.

they scored a touchdown on us, let the end-zone dance play out, the pompoms fly and the stadium announcers go wild. all yahoo can do is to set the ball on 30-yard line, get set, and kick it off for another set of downs. that’s what yahoo has done for 14 years, and that’s why yahoo is still here, standing tall, and it counts for something on the web.

the company has been the quiet innovator of online media from day-one. it used technology to do it – and i am glad to see the company realize that it’s time to stop chasing someone else’s story. nor someone else’s technology. knowingly or unknowingly, it’s time to lose the spent rocket boosters, and look for the next source of fuel to enter a new orbit.

search is NOT the product of the century – nothing can be a product of the century on the web. period. search is already a mature product. search has no feature growth potential. it only stands there to be picked off by the next best thing. with the talent and the the market position it boasts, yahoo can do build the technologies and sciences of the web that will create their own wonders for the web.

being the big player in online media WILL require new technologies. the traditional cornerstone concepts of the web – like scale, like distribution, like ubiquity, like speed… will matter in this market that the also-ran’s won’t have – the cnn’s. the hulu’s. the twitters.

it’s the beginning of the new season of this show. so quit writing eulogies numb nuts.

in mine, i noticed five alerts from facebook, a few twitter follower notices. couple of alerts from mailing list subscriptions, and a few bills and account notices, and a few notices about content from specific sites i like to go frequently [...]]]> if you are a facebook user like me, take a good look at your email inbox.

in mine, i noticed five alerts from facebook, a few twitter follower notices. couple of alerts from mailing list subscriptions, and a few bills and account notices, and a few notices about content from specific sites i like to go frequently to.

apart from some group subscription related to my alum group, nothing is what my inbox used to be “back in the day”. it’s now filled with stuff that’s important, but not really personal.

in fact, most of the interactions that i have on person-to-person basis with people i know now happen on Facebook. i guess facebook has successfully usurped the role of email as the “new letter”.

most of the person-to-person interactions aren’t confidential. yet email erected this wall of confidentiality that was probably coming in the way of self-expression. see, email has a high bar of relevancy. you message needs to ‘earn’ it’s status as a confidential and important communication to the recipient. most messages don’t and people end up using FB because it’s up to the recipient to freely ignore the message, and it’s not really addressed to any particular individual in the first place. free self expression and no strings attached.

facebook made this model of full broadcast and selective-pickup at each message level work beautifully to allow the sender of the message to freely express themselves.

secondly, managing my contact list has become a lot more important. and lets face it, inputting and updating the info of everyone in your social & professional circuit is still very very tedious. this list of your connections where keeping you informed of their info is their problem, has made communication a lot fruitful. my contact can now send me a message even if they really don’t know my contact info.

i used to have 2 email ids: one for personal mail (yahoo) and one for mailing list (gmail). now it’s a three tier – one for personal social communication that i feel compelled to read, one for important mail that don’t want to read, but i have to, and one for junk that i still would like to read someday, but most of the times, i don’t.

i do agree partly. one nuance i’d like to draw out is that ‘free’ should be accompanied by [...]]]> ran through cuban’s post on blog maverick. the dude is eccentric but does come up with good thoughts once in a while. the main argument is that a company based on a free product is eventually doomed to fail.

i do agree partly. one nuance i’d like to draw out is that ‘free’ should be accompanied by a mechanism to capture the value. if you think about a product, there are two faces to it – value creation and value capture. to capture the value, one must realize the value you are creating.

Dove Soap Ad

ponder this for example – if you are selling dove, what is the value you are really creating? is it about keeping your face clean, or is it about enhancing your sense of your beauty? i think they are capturing the value for the former, and creating the value in the latter. poor value capture. you can probably draw very many analogies for many web products out there.

facebook creates the value by giving you (and me) the satisfaction of expressing ourselves, and indulging in a bit of horseplay with people i know. and how they attempt to capture the value? by monetizing the page view inventory! how imbalanced. i’d figure out a way to monetize each instance of the ‘banter’ that holds users on the site and keeps them coming back over and over again.

finally i think free is dying because of the above – the imbalance between what needs to be free and what needs to capturing value.

btw, while i write this, someone tweeted about this exact same article. we must be related somehow.

they even have a neat PPT showing exactly what this is about, and an online form to apply – very helpful government, all done in [...]]]> folks, if you have real estate in the california, you can claim reduction in property taxes due to the decline in home values. check out the county assessor’s office of santa clara.

they even have a neat PPT showing exactly what this is about, and an online form to apply – very helpful government, all done in 30 min. may be i will start to reverse my opinion of government agencies!

Deadline is August, but apply early while the values are still down.

i found the answer in the video blog. in short their [...]]]> apologies for the long delay in posts. was checking out this video blog from the pony-tailed CEO of Sun Microsystems. wonder how it has gone from the brightest thing in the valley to being a lovable loser (like.. uh.. chicago cubs) to who cares (atlanta hawks).

i found the answer in the video blog. in short their strategy is -

1. Recruit every developer on earth to use our software or services.
2. Deliver the world’s most compelling commercial offerings.
3. Execute the world’s most effective selling/service connection between (#1) and (#2).

yeah. that’s some strategy, eh? especially (2). i’d buy sun’s stock on that.

pony tail, check. cool? no. get rid of this clown and return the sun to silicon valley.

purely from corp planning cycles perspective, you can expect companies to plan 2009 [...]]]> did a quick plot of unemployment rate history of silicon (from Employment Development Department website). the idea was to see if the current situation (at 7.8% unemployment as of Dec 2008). the idea was to see when the jobs would start to open up.

purely from corp planning cycles perspective, you can expect companies to plan 2009 as ‘conservative/hunker down’ year. so it would put us at 2010 as the earliest ‘growth’ year.

i am no regression guru, but if you notice, the time spent rising to the peak is much sharper in 2001 cycle than in 1990 cycle (2 yrs vs. 3 yrs). it’s probably even more sharp in 2009 cycle (~ 1 yr). assume the trigger point is around Oct 2008, marked by a VC’s obituary of good times – that puts us at Q4 2009 at the next unemployment peak. due to corp budget cycles, it might more likely be around Q1 2010.

next question is, what’s the peak? my hypothesis is that it’d be less than the 9.1% of 2003. the 2003 cycle was the dotcom bubble, pinching the Valley harder than the rest of the industries and regions. since 2008 is more organic meltdown, and the volume of labor force hasn’t risen as much as it did last time (see chart below), the unemployment rate might top out at 8.25-8.5%.

and when would the good times roll again? based on the same theory of accelerated swings above, i’d say, a year from recovery that puts us into Oct-Dec 2010. apple (or may be google, facebook, whoever) probably would have a killer product for christmas, lifting us to a nice Jan 2011.

loose logic, but that’s what bloggers do.

returned from the US last night. a year or so after relocating to the US, i got a new perspective on the country i lived in for the last 14 years. here’s what i wish i [...]]]> apologies for the long gap in posting. was in powerpoint-land for a few weeks. that’s over now, it’s back to execution.

returned from the US last night. a year or so after relocating to the US, i got a new perspective on the country i lived in for the last 14 years. here’s what i wish i had in bangalore – in a true product-manager fashion, organized into a bulleted list.

• lungful of fresh air
• quiet when you need it
• warm bagel with butter spread, starbucks to go with it
• shopping without the attendant stalking you
• gliding through the road in my ford expedition
• latest gadgets and tech – hot off the press, as it happens. why don’t damn netflix allow me to access their download service from india?

most of all, i miss the horizontal visibility – in bay area, you get to see a good 50-60 yards distance from anywhere. office, road, home, you name it. you actually get to see the sunset over the horizon on your drive home. you see a good mile down the road. you see the other end of the park. here in bangalore, you see gazillion people, buildings, an impending accident, an ugly pile of junk, a big hoarding.

quick – think of a time when you actually noticed something beyond about 50 ft?

living through the valley cycles since 1998, i’ve had the distinct displeasure of traversing many layoff situations. so much so, this time it actually is boring. at the risk of sounding like the wise/gray old man (that may be i actually [...]]]> Jason Calacanis of Mahalo has a great article on the right way to do the layoffs

living through the valley cycles since 1998, i’ve had the distinct displeasure of traversing many layoff situations. so much so, this time it actually is boring. at the risk of sounding like the wise/gray old man (that may be i actually am), here’s how i think it is best done.

but first, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, if one gets laid of. the new reality of workforce planning by employers and career planning by employees aren’t based on the old-world principles of loyalty and life-long association. this time, it’s more akin to a contract between two parties., a contract that can be terminated if it no longer makes sense. simple as that.

i have been personally ‘affected’ by layoffs – boy do i hate that word, call it what it is already. but every single time, i feel that i ended up in a better place doing better things. because i do believe that good talent always has a market, and the job you get during a downturn is always a better job than the one you get during a boom.

as a manager, that is the most uncomfortable thing you can possibly do. a strong working bond is severely and abruptly snapped. think of a kite whose string has been severed. everyone involved goes into a tailspin. with every employee that’s let go, a part of the person, the team and the organization leaves. not a hyperbole, but a fact.

the people that make the decision to have layoffs must first and foremost is to avoid those tailspins – at a company-wide scale, no less. the worst type of layoffs were those that happen every quarter, and happen without visibility. when one needs to cut, cut quickly, cut deep and cut clean. a shave here, nip/tuck there, will appear like a well-thought out sage/smart thing to do, but it doesn’t work. never has worked. it has wrecked companies and stuffed them into continuous mediocrity.

keep it wide open (no hidden cuts), respect the people’s emotion and take care of them in severence as you’d take care of them as an employee, if not better! the idea is to have them as your ambassador to the labor market.