Home › Forums › Financial Markets/Economics › lay offs
- This topic has 103 replies, 20 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 9 months ago by
flyer.
-
AuthorPosts
-
July 22, 2015 at 4:15 PM #788151July 22, 2015 at 4:23 PM #788152
Anonymous
Guest[quote=flu][quote]
Are you saying the average Qcom engineer makes 200K per year? Sounds a bit high to me, maybe I need to put in a resume.
Also, why are Indians not considered Asians, even though they come from the continent of Asia?[/quote]
I’m saying that including base+ RSU + bonus, $200k would be about average for someone probably Staff level or higher, which wouldn’t be out of line with what other companies are paying for someone with similar experience in years and work….which is probably also the same sort of extra benefits that QCOM is trying to cut that they just announced….But again, that was before all the cuts.
And I don’t know why Indians and Asians are classified differently, when you fill out the ethnicity bubbles, but it is what it is.[/quote]
I can see that for Staff level maybe, but certainly the vast majority of engineers would be making significantly less.
Of all the Qcom engineers what percentage do you think are H1B types? A significant amount or small minority?
July 22, 2015 at 5:13 PM #788153
CoronitaParticipant[quote=deadzone][quote=flu][quote]
Are you saying the average Qcom engineer makes 200K per year? Sounds a bit high to me, maybe I need to put in a resume.
Also, why are Indians not considered Asians, even though they come from the continent of Asia?[/quote]
I’m saying that including base+ RSU + bonus, $200k would be about average for someone probably Staff level or higher, which wouldn’t be out of line with what other companies are paying for someone with similar experience in years and work….which is probably also the same sort of extra benefits that QCOM is trying to cut that they just announced….But again, that was before all the cuts.
And I don’t know why Indians and Asians are classified differently, when you fill out the ethnicity bubbles, but it is what it is.[/quote]
I can see that for Staff level maybe, but certainly the vast majority of engineers would be making significantly less.
Of all the Qcom engineers what percentage do you think are H1B types? A significant amount or small minority?[/quote]
H1B’s and staff engineers are not mutually exclusive…Inf fact you would probably find more H1-B’s that are staff than non-H1-Bs. But I think an H1B senior engineer (1 level lower than staff) probably can pull in about $125-35k. with just a few years of experience. At least that’s what my tenants pulled in. But that was again with RSU and bonus.
Unlike a some shady contracting companies that exploit the H1B visas to bring in cheap labor, I know these bigger companies that do the direct employee hire do not really pay the H1B’s less than other people.
I know from experience when we hired H1-B’s, we paid them just as much as the non H1-B’s and in some cases, more, so they wouldn’t end up at our competitors. So they are just as likely to get the axe as anyone else when it comes to swinging the ax. Big companies have offshore offices, and whenever the bean counters start talking about cutting cost, that’s what they try to do: by moving/hiring more in the remote offices versus actually hiring H1-Bs and paying them US wages. In fact, in the sort of ironic twists, I have a lot of colleagues with H1-B that complain about why US companies continue to try to offshore stuff. It’s happening because growth is stale, and the company is entering “maintenance mode”.
July 22, 2015 at 6:36 PM #788154GuestThinking that layoffs of H1Bs would have a lot less impact on housing market than regular Engineers since H1Bs less likely to be homeowners.
July 22, 2015 at 8:38 PM #788155an
Participant[quote=flu]I don’t think Q’s problem though are unique to Q. Every chip company in the U.S. is getting squeezed. Q’s fall might just feel like it’s a bigger deal, because up until recent times, Q has been pretty much immune to the pricing pressure from increased competition, and so for the majority of the times that every other chip company was fighting for a piece of the pie, Q breezed through those rough waters. I guess it also has finally caught up Q as it already existed in every other semi company in the U.S.[/quote]No, their problem is not unique and I saw it coming. What’s unique is Steve Mollenkopf’s leadership. When he took over, I felt that this would happen, but wasn’t expecting it to happen this quick and this drastic.
July 22, 2015 at 9:10 PM #788156GuestIt’s not a nothing-burger, but any negative impact from QCOM layoffs on the local real estate market will be spread out over several years.
Here’s why – any homeowner today has several options to mitigate financial pain, more than ever before:
July 22, 2015 at 9:41 PM #788158all
Participant[quote=AN]No, their problem is not unique and I saw it coming. What’s unique is Steve Mollenkopf’s leadership. When he took over, I felt that this would happen, but wasn’t expecting it to happen this quick and this drastic.[/quote]
Good thing Q did not let M$ steal him.
July 22, 2015 at 9:57 PM #788159CoronitaParticipant[quote=all][quote=AN]No, their problem is not unique and I saw it coming. What’s unique is Steve Mollenkopf’s leadership. When he took over, I felt that this would happen, but wasn’t expecting it to happen this quick and this drastic.[/quote]
Good thing Q did not let M$ steal him.[/quote]
I’m not really sure if Steve is leading Qualcomm in the right direction. It seems like they are exclusively trying to focus on chip and patent….Exclusively on chip is going to be really tough because the edge that Qualcomm had is getting smaller by the day…And Q won’t win a battle against the asian companies when it comes to competing on cost alone. And with the way the industry is heading, the asian companies have caught up. MediaTek is getting really close, and Samsung’s Exynos is gaining much more weight. Samsung also has their own LTE modem in the ATT S6 phones shipped here, which is remarkable, considering how fast Samsung was able to get their LTE modem into a tier 1 customer for the U.S. And MediaTek is now in a a few phones in the U.S. now, specifcally the phones from Alcatel that Tmobile offers ($100 android smart phones)
Product differentiation is getting increasingly difficult for Q, and unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be something significant in the near term to drive growth moving forward. For example, not much going on wrto 5G
The problem is that Qualcomm has done such a great job destroying competition in the past, that there are no other significant employers here that can easily absorb some of the employees with specialized skillset. The choices are Intel (which is in lockdown/cost cutting mode too) and Broadcom (which just exited the LTE business, and just got acquired by a company).
It looks like the asian companies are now dishing out the pain to the Q.
What I found really frightening for engineering minds is that in that restructuring plan presented, if you look at the presentation, all it has are financial and wall street metrics that they want to hit. Almost no information/direction on technological innovation that they plan on doing… If this was a presentation done by Irwin Jacobs, it would have looked drastically different, with the presentation completely on innovation and next generation things. I think the business/wall street folks have finally settled in at Qualcomm, and it’s no longer going to be engineering focused as it once was… And that sucks for engineers.
July 22, 2015 at 10:47 PM #788160Participant[quote=flu][quote=all][quote=AN]No, their problem is not unique and I saw it coming. What’s unique is Steve Mollenkopf’s leadership. When he took over, I felt that this would happen, but wasn’t expecting it to happen this quick and this drastic.[/quote]
Good thing Q did not let M$ steal him.[/quote]
I’m not really sure if Steve is leading Qualcomm in the right direction. It seems like they are exclusively trying to focus on chip and patent….Exclusively on chip is going to be really tough because the edge that Qualcomm had is getting smaller by the day…And Q won’t win a battle against the asian companies when it comes to competing on cost alone. And with the way the industry is heading, the asian companies have caught up. MediaTek is getting really close, and Samsung’s Exynos is gaining much more weight. Samsung also has their own LTE modem in the ATT S6 phones shipped here, which is remarkable, considering how fast Samsung was able to get their LTE modem into a tier 1 customer for the U.S. And MediaTek is now in a a few phones in the U.S. now, specifcally the phones from Alcatel that Tmobile offers ($100 android smart phones)
Product differentiation is getting increasingly difficult for Q, and unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be something significant in the near term to drive growth moving forward. For example, not much going on wrto 5G
The problem is that Qualcomm has done such a great job destroying competition in the past, that there are no other significant employers here that can easily absorb some of the employees with specialized skillset. The choices are Intel (which is in lockdown/cost cutting mode too) and Broadcom (which just exited the LTE business, and just got acquired by a company).
It looks like the asian companies are now dishing out the pain to the Q.
What I found really frightening for engineering minds is that in that restructuring plan presented, if you look at the presentation, all it has are financial and wall street metrics that they want to hit. Almost no information/direction on technological innovation that they plan on doing… If this was a presentation done by Irwin Jacobs, it would have looked drastically different, with the presentation completely on innovation and next generation things. I think the business/wall street folks have finally settled in at Qualcomm, and it’s no longer going to be engineering focused as it once was… And that sucks for engineers.[/quote]
I think all was being sarcastic. But I agree with your statement. Which is why I said I saw this coming a year and a half ago. Like you said, Android is a race to bottom and MediaTek is king in that market. Samsung and Apple use their own chip. I feel like if Microsoft is successful with Continuum and Windows 10, that might change the high end phone landscape as well, especially if the allow Intel powered smartphone to run win32 app. In the landscape I see 5 years from now, I don’t see a big spot for QCOM to dominate like they have been.July 22, 2015 at 10:58 PM #788161flyer
Participant[quote=Jim the Realtor]It’s not a nothing-burger, but any negative impact from QCOM layoffs on the local real estate market will be spread out over several years.
Here’s why – any homeowner today has several options to mitigate financial pain, more than ever before:
http://www.bubbleinfo.com/2015/07/22/qualcomm-layoffs-and-real-estate/%5B/quote%5D
Those are all interesting points, but, eventually, unless the individuals in question have trust funds or can tap a fully funded retirement, it may be difficult for them to replace their earning power in San Diego. We had a couple of neighbors in RSF who tried to do so during the last downturn, and it did not end well.
If someone chooses to deplete their finances to dangerously low levels, that is their option, but I sincerely hope we are not going to encourage people to avoid their responsibility to make payments on their homes–again.
July 23, 2015 at 8:07 PM #788220
svelteParticipantLet’s break it down using guesstimates…
QCOM has 33K employees, 15K of which are in San Diego…50%
If the layoffs occur in the same ratio, that means 2.5k of the 5K will come out of San Diego.
Out of those, say a third live in high cost areas along the coast, such as Carmel Valley.
The two-thirds not in high cost areas (1600 folks) will likely not be forced to sell due to working spouses, 401Ks, reserves, etc that can probably meet the lower mortgage. Of course some of those families will choose to move to other areas of the country, but they likely won’t be forced into selling at fire sale prices.
The one-third (800) that live in high cost coastal areas may be at risk. Say a quarter to half of those are forced to sell. That’s 200-400 more homes on the market over the next year…20 to 30 a month.
Will it affect housing prices? Probably. Will it crash housing prices? No.
July 23, 2015 at 9:47 PM #788222CoronitaParticipant[quote=svelte]Let’s break it down using guesstimates…
QCOM has 33K employees, 15K of which are in San Diego…50%
If the layoffs occur in the same ratio, that means 2.5k of the 5K will come out of San Diego.
Out of those, say a third live in high cost areas along the coast, such as Carmel Valley.
The two-thirds not in high cost areas (1600 folks) will likely not be forced to sell due to working spouses, 401Ks, reserves, etc that can probably meet the lower mortgage. Of course some of those families will choose to move to other areas of the country, but they likely won’t be forced into selling at fire sale prices.
The one-third (800) that live in high cost coastal areas may be at risk. Say a quarter to half of those are forced to sell. That’s 200-400 more homes on the market over the next year…20 to 30 a month.
Will it affect housing prices? Probably. Will it crash housing prices? No.[/quote]
There’s another angle to this that I hate to say..But…The other angle to this is out of the layoffs, how much of these layoffs are disproportionately going to be the grunt worker bees engineers versus say Directors and VPs, that tend to live in the higher cost areas? There are a lot of Directors and VPs that have very little number of reports at that company. But at the same time, they probably are much better connected to the execs than your run of the mill grunt enginerd. If this layoff happens like most traditional layoffs at other companies, the management team manage to screw over the grunts while saving themselves.
And even if an director vp is impacted, I’m pretty sure they get a much nicer severance (early retirement) package than your average worker bee enginerd.
For example, when Sanjay when to Motorola, some of his favtorite VPs were pushed out by the new leaders. I believe some of them were forced to retire. However, those VPs still live where they lived in Del Mar and CV, the last time I visited friends that live next to them. My own neighbor was pushed out of Motorola when Google took over. He’s doing just fine as well, not working for a few months…
there will be some churn by some folks, nevertheless. Not convinced it will be earth shattering…
July 25, 2015 at 8:55 PM #788260Gata
ParticipantHousing market is due for a correction, prices are unsustainable when work is moving to other States/countries. A friend of mine who is a QCT senior engineer is scouting for a home in ATX as a result of this layoff. He is Mr. SD. QCT is hiring in TX, and opening a new design center. I believe many layoffs will come from SD, and hiring will occur in lower cost areas (such as India, ATX).
July 25, 2015 at 9:31 PM #788261GuestBut the demand is here – people keep coming. Sellers can get what the last guy got.
The overwhelming #1 fact: People who have lived here a while don’t want to leave. At any price.
July 25, 2015 at 10:11 PM #788262bearishgurl
Participant[quote=Jim the Realtor]But the demand is here – people keep coming. Sellers can get what the last guy got.
The overwhelming #1 fact: People who have lived here a while don’t want to leave. At any price.[/quote]
JTR is correct, except I don’t believe the present and future defaulters (doesn’t matter the reason) will be given a “free pass” to squat for 30 months or more (like what happened between 2007 and 2012). I’m currently seeing some 40-year mod deals made in 2010/11 which aren’t going to end well for the trustor-homedebtors in question. Borrowers who got roped into these deals due to “squatting too long” and wanting to keep the status quo (mostly for their kids) are now slowly coming to the realization that their 1st TD lender is the one who is going to win at this game …. certainly NOT THEM!
The SD residents that will be okay without a well-paying job will be those who have paid off the mortgage on their principal residence or have the ability to do so anytime they so desire.
However you slice it, SD was never meant to be a town where one “strikes it rich” on a W-2 job. I DO BELIEVE it will eventually become the land of retirees, real estate “heirs” paying a pittance in property taxes as well as otherwise self-sufficient residents who are business owners or 100% of their income is passive (they don’t hold a local W-2 job).
SD’s service workers are/will reside with established relatives or in Section 8 units (or MX and commute every workday).
In some zip codes, the above is has been the main demographic for at least the last 20 years.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.