Valley Newbies: What Slowdown?

Vasanth Sridharan | April 11, 2008 11:53 AM

Graduation.jpgSlowdown? Did someone say Silicon Valley was heading for a slowdown? Don't tell the kids getting out of UC Berkeley. Our thoroughly informal poll of recent grads and grads-to-be finds plenty of optimism that they'll land their dream jobs. Or, at least, a job.

One computer science student undergrad who's out in May said that he had four offers -- two from startups and two from larger companies. He eventually narrowed it down to a position at VMWare. And he said he wasn’t the exception.

“Most people I know do have jobs. I know a couple who are a little unhappy with their offers, but it’s not that anybody’s searching really hard and not finding anything.”

Another recent computer science grad tells us that his job search consisted, more or less, of heading to the school's job fair last fall. His reward? A job at Google (GOOG), where he works on YouTube. He said that everybody he knew at Berkeley “had a billion offers at their hands”

The question: Are these folks the last of an era? Or are Valley recession stories overheated?

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11 Comments

anon said:
I'm graduating in computer science and math from a top 20 university and received job offers from every place I interviewed with, including Google and Microsoft.
Henry Blodget said:
Well done! If only we can find a way to make computer science the new "law school," the country will be back on the right track.
Ted S said:
It looks like a mixed-bag from where I sit. I'm on the marketing/ analytics side of the table but in my recent search for a position in the valley I've definitely noticed a lot of open listings for technical minded individuals. One day there seems to be a drop in listings on Craigslist/TheLadders/etc... but a couple days later and the list fills a couple of pages.

As for how many of these companies are actually
pulling the trigger and hiring against their descriptions, that remains to be seen. I have noticed a trend in the last week or two with less consumer focused startups posting and more in the b2b sector but that could really be a perception issue more than anything else. Ad Tech SF next week should give a lot of insight into the Valley's economy at least as it pertains to advertising/marketing/product companies and positions.
Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp CEO (URL) said:
Agree, when I read that NYTimes article about the "slowdown" the other day I kind of laughed. Sure deal volume is off, but the recession hasn't really hit the Valley tech scene yet. That's not to say it isn't coming, it's virtually guaranteed. But every engineer we talk to still has multiple offers (typically a mix of Facebook, Google, and startups), which suggests the things haven't turned yet.
anon said:
The recession may not have yet hit Silicon Valley, but the recession has been hitting computer science departments for years. Enrollment has been cut in half and even those who are enrolled (at top schools) tend to seek financial jobs or those outside of software engineering. For the first time this year, CS enrollment did not drop. That means for the next 4 years at least, companies will have to look harder and harder for engineers.

For me, I never really had a choice. I've known I wanted to pursue computer science since middle school. Computer science has to be seen as sexy and lucrative before the other students will come back. The lucrative part is getting there, but no one has brought sexy back.
anon2 said:
Lets get this straight. The CS departments which had their enrollments cut in half aren't the types of places that a google or facebook would recruit from in the first place. If you wanted to know whether the recession has hit the valley, go talk to some local state U CS grads. you know, lower-tier CS guys whose resumes are nothing more than toilet paper for stoppelman, brin, & zuckerburg
anon said:
Not sure about that, anon2. Check out:

http://opa.berkeley.edu/analysesandreports/MajorsAndDegreesByAcadProgram.htm

For Computer Science, between 02-03 and 05-06, enrollment dropped by 34%. EECS did not drop nearly as much, probably because people felt safer in a combined major. My school has experienced a similar trend of people that used to go into CS taking the CompE or EE route instead.
UserName said:
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