As the larger economic picture continues to look dismal, the reverberations are being felt within the tech sector. As our parent blog GigaOM reports, the venture capital firms are starting to get antsy about whether Silicon Valley can continue business as usual. Apple and other tech stocks are way down, and layoffs are showing up in the industry as well (though there are layoffs in good times too, depending on who you work for).
And yet, when we asked how the economy was treating you web workers personally, the majority of respondents didn’t report a slowdown. I’m seeing the same pattern in other communities I’m a part of - Rails developers, for example, still seem upbeat on the prospect of more work.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve been paying the slightest bit of attention to the news recently, you know that the US economy is, by some accounts, in dire shape. With the failure of high-profile firms, the rescue of others, and a $700 billion bailout wending its way through Congress, it’s understandable that many are feeling jittery about the future. An era of contracting credit and a tighter job market don’t seem like much fun.
At WWD, though, we’re focused on our own little niche of the economy: the web worker. Here, the picture may be slightly brighter. But there are several forces that affect us directly when things get tight:
- Web workers can end up being viewed as easily-trimmed jobs, especially if they’re not in the office to exercise political clout.
- But contractors may be in a good position, because contracting work out is often cheaper than hiring more full-time employees.
- Tighter budgets may get more companies to consider telecommuting, as a way to save money on office space.
Read the rest of this entry »
There are plenty of manufacturers and carriers out there who will be happy to tell you what you want from a phone. To hear them tell it, if you’re not carrying a device with a camera, a touchscreen, an internet browser, GPS, Bluetooth, and a fancy colorful operating system, you might as well be carting around a tin can and a long piece of string.
With the recent upgrades to the iPhone, and the imminent release of the first Google “Android” phone, the hype machine surrounding these devices has been cranked up to higher levels than ever. But while I’m sure there are focus groups and test devices involved in the process, no one ever asked me what I wanted in my cell phone. And I’ll bet they never asked you, either.
Read the rest of this entry »
