Boomtown Redux: Job Market Heats Up In Silicon Valley

I distinctly remember this NY Times headline from about a year ago:  ‘Profits, Not Jobs, on the Rebound in Silicon Valley’. According to the WSJ, it looks like things are changing:

WSJ.com - Boomtown Redux: Job Market Heats Up In Silicon Valley
The nation’s technology capital lost 185,000 jobs, or one in five, between 2001 and 2005. This year, state economists expect a net inflow of people into the area for the first time in six years.

[snip]

“People keep saying Silicon Valley is dead, and it’s never true,” says Sean Randolph, president of the Bay Area Economic Forum, a San Francisco-based group that studies the region’s economy. “There’s an immense infrastructure for research and development here,” he says, that helps push Silicon Valley continually up the skills curve.

One of its big draws is money. Average annual pay for the region’s tech workers rose to $70,000 last year from around $64,000 in 2003, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit business group. Executive positions typically command six-figure packages. While stock options have come under fire amid cases of improper dating of grants, many tech companies, especially start-ups, are still doling them out heavily. That offers employees the chance to cash in big if their company goes public and its stock price rises.

[snip]

But in February 2005, fed up with Minnesota winters, Mr. Boos called two recruiters. He told them he wanted a job at a California start-up that was heading toward an initial public offering, which would offer him a chance to get rich. Mr. Boos quickly landed an interview with Good Technology, a fast-growing company that competes with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd.

By April 2005, Mr. Boos was close to an offer from Good Technology. At the same time, he was in discussions for the job of chief information officer at Los Angeles-based MySpace, a social-networking Web site aimed at teenagers that has since been acquired by News Corp. With the competing offer looming, Mr. Boos, asked for — and got — a sizable chunk of stock options in Good Technology. He also received a salary matching that of his previous job. (He declined to reveal numbers.)

Mr. Boos paid nearly $1.4 million for a Silicon Valley home, according to public records, three times what he got for his Minnesota home last year. His wife, Rhonda, who had worked for Sun Microsystems in Minnesota for 17 years, transferred to Sun’s Silicon Valley headquarters from Minneapolis and received a 15% increase in total compensation.

“I came here for the future equity,” says Mr. Boos. “The ante to get into this game is very high, but so is the potential return.”

There are definitely some interesting factors in play right now…  for example, too much money chasing after money, the increased costs/hurdles of going public, the pace of aquisitions, the fluctuating housing market, possible stagflation… etc.
Interesting times ahead.