I agree, SD is not such a great boom economy as many people expect.
1. First off -> “Qualcomm”. Though there are 500 jobs in the web, but are they really hiring 500 people?? I doubt it. I know for a fact that, by law, whenever a company has an opening, HR need to post the job openly to the public (Equal opportunity reasons).
A lot of times, the job is really intended for internal transfer or H1 visa holders (cheap SW engineers from India/China). They post the job in the web for 1 or 2 months, and they hardly interview anyone to fill those positions. Once, they fulfill the government’s requirement, they simply hire some H1 folks from another country and claim that they couldn’t find any good candidates; in fact, they simply want somebody cheap.
2. Telecom is simply not as HOT as several years back. True, Qualcomm is #1 in CDMA mobile technology. But, you know what, CDMA is representing less than 20% of the whole pie. The rest (80%) of the market is using GSM or WCDMA. Qualcomm is not the dominant power in GSM/WCDMA. As the CDMA is shrinking, QCOM profit is going to be hurt big time.
3. “Nokia and Qualcomm are in San Diego. The economy MUST BE GOOD in SD!!!”
– Not true. Nokia is ramping down their CDMA business unit in SD. I ‘expect’, 750-1000 people are going to be layoff. In fact, from my source, the big news is going to be announce on 8/8/06.
Also, remember the Sanyo-Nokia mobile phone business merger deal? It did not go through. It’s in the news too. The whole thing just fall apart. When Qualcomm is working too hard to force other competitors out of CDMA competition (ie Nokia) by pricing, IPR rights and monopolizing the chipset business. Nobody wins. Everyone switch to alternative technology (ie GSM/WCDMA) to avoid the bully.
SD loses the business and workforces are moving out.
4. “Motorola is hiring”
– Well, Motorola is always hiring, true. BUT they also frequently laying people off. They hire a bunch of people working for them to rush for big projects. When the project is done, “SEE YA”.
5. Rumors have that a ‘huge’ government contracting deal didn’t go through. I won’t mention company name as this is just rumor and I’m working to get more info on this. Hundreds of people could possibly be affected.
Talk about job loss in the near future. 🙂
With the housing bubble burst and job loss, from my estimation, “50% drop is pretty much IN DA BAG” for the next 7-10 years. What do you think, Mr Watts? How ’bout them apples?
By the end of this 2006, we will all see a MUCH clear picture of the local SD economy. Mark my word.
