I have been extremely frustrated that there is a contingent of the community who seem to believe that none of this is an issue. I have had discussions on the NextNY mailing lists where people have provided a list of successful IT related exits as proof that the tech community in new york is vibrant. This to me is the community sticking its head in the sand.
One of the things I find interesting about this is that the people who think there is a problem seem more commonly to be on the tech side of things, and the people who don't think there is a problem tend to be more on the business/marketing side. I am not sure this will continue to hold as more people join the discussion, but it does make sense to me that the closer you are to the issue, the more obvious it is. Given that we had a room full of people directly involved in the technology issues, there was a strong sense that there is a problem here. Some of the most interesting and relevant points made by the panel were as follows:
- Panel moderator Brian Kelly, Director, Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization, indicated that essentially all biotech in New York leaves immediately after getting funding.
- Panelist John Fox President and CEO, Innovation Fuels said that New York VCs are far more conservative and lose deals to the west coast because they are more aggressive. And since money is so much easier out west, people leave.
- Panelist Franklin Madison, Technology Program Director at ITAC, said that there is lots of IT in New York, but that it is buried in the infrastructure of New York and not as visible as it is in Silicon Valley.
- Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum, Bruce Bachenheimer, and Clinical Professor, Director of Entrepreneurship at Pace University asked which if any of the New York area universities are interested in helping students become entrepreneurs.
My personal interest is in trying to figure out a way to improve the technology community in New York, particularly as it relates to what I call "hard core" technology. The New York Tech Meetup is great, but most of the products we see are not solutions to hard problems. The tech often seems thin.
One of the more obvious tasks is getting the major New York area universities to encourage technology entrepreneurship or working in an entrepreneurial environment as an exciting career path. In New York, a disproportionate number of the computer science students are ending up working on Wall Street. I think it would be helpful if there was more of a spirit of creation in the New York computer science graduates, as there is in those from the bay area.
In any case, the MIT event surfaced all of these issues both on the panel and it lots of informal discussions afterwards. Lots of people approached me and wanted to tell me their war stories. It appears to me that there is serious problem bubbling up to the surface.
But the goal of this piece is not to complain, but to figure out how to move the ball forward. The first step of attempting to fashion solutions here has to be people from the various constituency groups coming together. As such, I would like to begin an ongoing dialog about the issue. Please leave comments below, or join the just formed http://groups.google.com/group
re: bricabox. Well his job isn't posted on his site for one thing.
ReplyDeleteFinally found it:
"BricaBox is a NY-based firm currently developing a new type of publishing platform. We're looking for a highly skilled PHP developer to join our ranks as we ramp up to launch our app in mid-February. Expertise in PHP 5 and OOP patterns a must. Strong MySQL and JS/jQuery knowledge required. Bonus points for XHTML, CSS, UI, and/or UX savvy; must be willing to work 3+ days a week out of our Madison Sq. Park office. Ideally, you can dive into a complex codebase and rapidly become familiar with minimal guidance. Position will be a 3-month contract with potential to become full-time."
I am pretty sure the expectations of this ad speak for themselves and it is not surprising he got no responses.
For starters, he needs to post the exact salary he is offering, as well as if benefits and relocation are offered. Since this is a 3 month "contract to perm" for "3 days a week," it's obvious "reading between the lines" that there are no benefits, no relocation, and the salary will be assuming 24 hr work weeks as an employee, even though it will turn out you have to work 60 hrs a week.
No thanks!
Also, drop the jQuery requirement, and for that matter, drop the PHP requirement as well.
Well, I'm not going to respond too driectly to Daniel's comment, though we've heard loud and clear that being more flowery would have been better in the job posting. It's not just 3 days of paid work, though, it's 5, only three of them have to be in the office.
ReplyDeleteANYWAY -- to your post, Hank, I do wonder why you feel like this discussion has to move off the nextNY list. I think there's a really vibrant discussion which goes on there all the time. I don't think you were active then, but one year ago last week there was an amazing thread talking about all these issues. http://groups.google.com/group/nextNYdigital/browse_thread/thread/59b863e7a51812c4
Manage whatever separate list that you want, but I'm interested in why you see a benefit for a different forum, considering you've already got the highest concentration of thoughtful discussions going on in one place.
And on a more general note, I do think people are genuinely concerned about the market conditions of this City. Tonight, at the NYSIA event, that was brought up a lot. What to do about it -- from engaging the city to working with the VC community -- is an interesting, other question. And again, I think it's a question which can be organized using existing infrastructure (i.e. nextNY -- but I'm biased because I <3 nextNY!)
Not sure the link went through. Check out the discussion here: http://tinyurl.com/ypa5lt
ReplyDeleteNate,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. Just to clarify I am not trying to move the discussion off NextNY. What I am really trying to do is to bring some new people to a discussion. People that are not part of next NY and might not want to get every email, but people who I can convince that it is important to participate in this particular conversation in a smaller more personal setting.
Regarding people being concerned, I definitely agree that there are concerned people. But I am definitely telling the truth when I say that there are some who specifically said things like "I don't think new york is behind, just different"
here is the thread. Its a long thread and I believe in there there are some comments by andrew baisley and charlie that are arguing that really there is not much of a problem. If you look to about the mid point of the thread you can start to see them.
There is nothing to lure young, hard core, entrepreneurial techies to New York. If you were a young, entrepreneurial tech geek who was will to relocate in order to pursue a career in technology and throw in with a startup, where would you go? You would go to silicon valley or Boston, not New York. If you were a young theater person however, it's a no brainer, you would come to New York.
ReplyDeleteSo how do you lure young, hard core, entrepreneurial techies to New York? Create opportunity for them. How do you create opportunity for them, allow them to create their own opportunities and businesses by copying the Ycombinator model. Four times a year lure ten young hungry tech teams to New York for three month long intensive product and business building "camps" that culminate in an investor day. At the end of the three months many roots will be planted and many teams and talent will stay.
There is a large enough community of experienced and successful tech entrepreneurs to donate their time, knowledge and contacts to help run the program. This is where the naysayers start saying it's too expensive to live in New York City. Bullsh**t! Tell that to the thousands of out of work actors struggling to make it in their chosen profession who live here. If the opportunity is here, the young entrepreneurs can figure out how to live here same as the young actors do.
So why don't we do this? The answer is simple. Money! Between seed money, administrative and salary for one full time person a program like this would cost about $1,000,000 a year and would need to have funds for at least five years before any returns from exits could be expected to come in and keep the program running. It's a super high risk scenario and no VCs will touch it. The only logical funder of a program like this is the entity who will benefit from it most and that is New York City herself. It needs to be a cooperative program between government and the NYC tech community funded by the city with the goal of attracting talented tech workers. I tried working with some people in the city government on this who were charged with making NYC more tech friendly but in the end all they had to offer was hot air and a nice breakfast at Gracie Mansion.
Yeah, that's about what I thought. The reason bright developers don't want to relocate there to work for anything other than Wall Street or FogCreek is that the rest of the tech businesses are highly unrealistic about the market.
ReplyDeleteTalented developers should be willing to move to NY and live like out of work actors? Yeah... right. That is about the most clueless statement I've heard and sadly represents the business acumen of the complainers and bellyachers. The reality of the situation is that any business that can not figure out how to attract qualified employees in one of the largest cities in the world deserves all the failure they have earned.