You are all wrong…

[meadandale]

@kewp

You clearly don’t know what you are talking about regarding high tech workers and offshoring.

If you’re paying attention, workers in India are demanding higher salaries and, despite FUD to the contrary, the quality of work offshore, except in the case of very simple tech work, tends to be substandard to that produced in the states.

I’ve been gainfully employed in the software profession in san diego for years and my salary in the last few years has always been over 6 figures.

In fact, I’m working from home tomorrow….

[Cow_tipping]

meadandale on March 1, 2007 – 10:20pm. wrote

Yes True about India. True about tech in the US. The offshoring has somehow increased the burden on us to keep it going. Its not even substandard, its down right pathetic.
I know why … but its not really relevant to this discussion.

Anyway, I however dont see it as an argument to keep San Diego real estate prices propped up, because by and large there has been no complaints about the quality of work in IT comming from for example … Kansas.

Cool.
Cow_tipping.

[kewp]

Meadandale,

I know full well about how crappy the off-shore stuff can be. A startup I worked for went under partially due to a garbage client written by our offshore coding group.

However, I’ve also worked places where India did 80-90% of the coding and a senior coder just cleaned it up and packaged it. This is a workable model and can produce just as good a product for less cost than using an all domestic staff.

I don’t remember exactly what I said (and am too lazy to look), but I will concur that there will always be a demand locally for top-talent. If you are a junior coder, fresh out of school, etc, its much harder these days to get an entry level gig. Again, its all perspective!

I telecommute when I want, make close enough to six figures (equiv. with bennies IMHO) and have a recession-proof gig, so I can’t really complain anyways.

[4plexowner]

FormerSanDiegan – I had never looked at bubbles in the way that you present – ie, one every 2.5 years – the frequency certainly bears looking at

That’s a lot of bubbles happening in a short time!

I wonder how the frequency correlates to the date 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window – I would suspect that bubble frequency increased after that point

Perhaps when all the countries in the world are using fiat currencies (as they are today) it isn’t appropriate to focus on individual asset bubbles – it may be that the bubble to focus on is the credit/debt bubble – ie, individual stock market and real estate bubbles are only pimples on the back of the giant planet-wide credit/debt bubble

~

The magnitude of money/credit/debt creation going on right now is truly mind-boggling – the US is creating new money/debt at an 11-12% annual rate – China is doing so at an 18% rate – all the other central banks are doing their part also – supposedly the global rate is around 12% right now

This newly created ‘wealth’ has to go somewhere – it appears that it is flowing from one bubble to the next

~

What is the end game for all this credit/debt creation?

One of the theories that intrigues me is the Kondratieff Winter (Google search it if you care)

Kondratieff was a Russian economist who discovered a long-term cycle in Western economies – the cycle is more than 50 yrs – Kondratieff divided the cycle into 4 parts and correlated them to the seasons of the year

The Kondratieff Winter is when all the financial excesses are washed out of the system – most paper wealth disappears – businesses/enterprises that are economically non-viable fail – asset prices return to their fundamental basis – etc

Essentially, the K-Winter resets the economic system so the next cycle can start

~

I have mixed feelings about long-term cycles – I suspect they may be like statistics in that you can prove anything you want if you focus on the right data and exclude everything else

With that said, these are some long-term cycles that I find interesting:

1. Kondratieff – depending on whose interpretation you use, the bottom of the next K-Winter should fall in the 2010-2012 timeframe

2. Kress 120 year cycle – bottom in 2010-2014 timeframe

3. Fourth Turning event due 2005’ish – Fourth Turning is a book by William Strauss and Neil Howe which says that every four generations there is significant turmoil, usually war or disease or both

4. collapse of exponentially expanding fiat currency due 2016’ish – George Ure (www.urbansurvival.com) theorizes that no fiat currency can be expanded for more than 83.5 years – at that point the interest on the debt goes parabolic and the whole mess collapses under its own weight

~

Bottom line inre bubbles is “Who knows?”

They are certainly interesting to consider

[DaisyDuke]

Yes Desperate Buyer things are looking rosier by the minute . . .

http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/nmn/frame.htm

2:30 pm : The bottom continues to fall out of stocks as concerns about sub-prime mortgage misfortunes spreading into the broader economy and signs of liquidity drying up continue to weigh on the proceedings.

Even though Fed Chairman Bernanke put to rest those fears in a Q&A session after speaking before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, his words appear to have since fallen on deaf ears. Countrywide Financial (CFC 37.05 -0.39) has since reported in an SEC filing that delinquencies surged 19% last year while U.S. regulators today demanded tougher standards for sub-prime adjustable-rate mortgages.DJ30 -109.07 NASDAQ -31.43 SP500 -14.97 NASDAQ Dec/Adv/Vol 2211/750/1.66 bln NYSE Dec/Adv/Vol 2390/834/1.22 bln

[Cow_tipping]

Kewp

The India of old and India of today are so different.
In the 90’s and I wanna say through most of the 90’s … you get out of college, you get a job with a company, and you can work there till you retire. You’ll not be fired or laid off or let go. You’d be promoted almost on a schedule and good performance will send you into more visble and higher profile projects and poor performance will leave you in the low profile work. That meant, you’d put in work, expect and get rewards for doing well, and pretty much sit there cos its now your life. Typically people change companies 1-2 times in a career and almost never change careers. That also meant, you’d almost never have to save for a rainy day. You can work on $100 a month, live on $50 a month and save the other 50. Your 100 will ratchet up with inflation, the expenses will sit at close to the 50% and heck drop with house purchase etc and make your life literally heaven. Today, people get fired for no reason, laid off and employees are much much more ready to run here and there every few years. Enter the american way of thinking. Do it as shittily as possible and get it out the door, collect the $$ for it and run. No offence to the american way … but we prefer to let china and India to it for us with this philosophy.
Anyway, if it was from that previous generation of programmers, it can be immaculate.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.

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