<p>I suppose if you’re up for strawman arguments, then there’s no real reason to continue. This won’t get anywhere that way.</p>
<p>I was refuting this:
You said it was overpriced. We both qualified our statements.</p>
<p>I was not addressing Instagram. I suppose if you’re up for hasty generalizations, then there’s no real reason to continue.</p>
<p>I never said FB was a gimmick (only that it could have been in the past but grew out of it), nor did you prove that it isn’t overpriced. Its growth very well could be considered bubble-esque, given that it’s worth more than companies like Ford and HP, whose value is obvious.
Another example of clearly overpriced: Quora. Q&A site by ex-FB employees, raised $11m in startup funds, now has a net worth in the billions, while it is certainly not worth that much.</p>
<p>You said it was gimmicky (at least to some degree):
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<p>Here was my argument that it’s not overpriced (at the current price):
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<p>You do realize that HP’s low value is wholly deserved - Leo Apotheker mucked things up and they had to fire him, and profit margins are much lower, with HP stuck in the stagnant consumer hardware market (very different industries)
Ford is in an entirely different industry - a low-growth industry - and it certainly has never seen 65% profit growth.</p>
<p>The $11MM investment in Quora valued Quora at $86MM in 2010, an entirely fair valuation IMO (I personally use Quora and find it to be interesting).
I would agree that $1B is too much, but that $1B valuation was a buyout offer - when you buy out a company you don’t buy at market price, you have to offer a premium. Nonetheless, I agree that $1B is overpriced.</p>
<p>Returning to the OP’s concerns, and the big pictures, you will notice that all of these allegedly overpriced companies are in the area of social networking and mobile applications, a very niche market in the larger tech industry.</p>
<p>Even if there is a mobile or social media “bubble,” it is NOT an indication that there is a tech bubble. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc… (companies with established products) are all going to do just fine EVEN IF a social media/mobile “bubble” pops.</p>
<p>rsk102:
If you look for negative opinions, you will find them. This is exactly what you are doing. You know that this post is sterile as you are not looking for constructive answers but for answers that will contribute to your fears.
I think you should reconsider your way of thinking and seeing things, everybody should. This is something that has to be done on a daily basis; that is how we make rational decisions/statements. If you are not ready to do that, then there is no point for you in reading this thread.</p>
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But of course, that’s the point: these companies actually have a very clear value. Apple/Microsoft provide physical products, Amazon provides a market, and Google provides a ton of things. It’s these new products whose value is quite difficult to quantify and are therefore somewhat arbitrary (and bubble-esque).
And though Ford and HP may not be at the top of their game, the fact still remains that they are big business companies with far-reaching assets. It’s very much a threshold which FB shouldn’t really pass simply because its non-monetary value isn’t quite so big (arbitrary new-type value and all).
An all-out tech bubble is a good way off. But a social media bubble bursting would surely hurt the entire tech industry. Not to mention tech is vague enough to be pretty damn expansive.</p>
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<p>A social media bubble (if it exists) bursting would not surely hurt the entire tech industry. Even if Quora and all the new-fangled startups see sky-high valuations before subsequently crashing, 800 million active users would still use Facebook (the stock market does not affect the public’s desire to stalk one another), Google would be unaffected (Google+ is an experiment and is not even close to a core business; a crash in certain startups would not affect people’s need to search for info on a daily basis), people would still lust after Apple products, people like myself would still turn to Amazon since it is so convenient to buy things, etc, etc, etc…</p>
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<p>Bingo!</p>
<p>I have a BS Computer Science and 2+ years as a commissioned officer in the Army National Guard. The security clearance made all the difference. I was hired immediately post graduation by a telecom that had many classified government projects. It was the first job I applied to and it pays better than Google, Microsoft, etc. As you mentioned, jobs requiring a security clearance cannot be outsourced.</p>
<p>Note: I was just an average CS major at my school. Certainly not among the most talented in my program but it did not matter because I was the only one in the major that had an active security clearance.</p>
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<p>Agreed. Also some consideration needs to be made for technologies and/or skills that might be “hot” in the near future.</p>
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<p>Probably not, but it’s not immune to layoffs, restructuring, etc. Let’s face it. Engineering (no matter which subfield) is not a silver bullet. One just might become under- or unemployed, despite doing all the “right” things. This is the effect of a challenged, if not weak, economy. Because one can’t guarantee employment, one needs to manage things one can, such as how much money to spend on one’s education.</p>
<p>Engineering may have its own problems, but it’s a pretty stable field. It’s subject to economics just like anything else, but it’s still a pretty strong degree to work with.</p>
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<p>He never said it was immune to such. He said, "…more ‘safe’ " which means that it is not entirely safe. However, it is safe to assume that provided someone has a security clearance, he is, on average, no worse off than his peers, on average.</p>
<p>As for managing how much money to spend on one’s education, that’s too easy in some cases…
Some states like New Jersey have Tuition Waiver for its Guardsman which means as long as one is a satisfactory participant, his tuition will be waived at a public institution for an unlimited number of semesters, credits, degrees, and level of degree. This isn’t a grant or a type of financial aid, it’s simply state law that a Guardsman cannot be charged tuition. You really don’t have to manage how much money you’re spending on further education since you would be spending almost nothing for however many undergrad, grad, professional and doctoral programs you would like to attend.</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind for security clearance jobs:
You stand a better chance of being able to obtain a security clearance if your income to debt ratio is higher. It is very possible that individuals with enormous debts (ie. educational loans) will be denied a security clearance. Thus, sometimes it works to your advantage to attend a state school instead of a higher ranked private institution. Amusingly enough, security clearance jobs pay a premium on top of the most prestigious private sector employers.</p>
<p>My general advice to people who want to major in engineering is to avoid getting into unreasonable debt by attending a far less expensive public school, especially if they offer scholarships.</p>
<p>Every so often, I hear about people who work for defense contractors in various types of computer-related positions who were laid off and are now unemployed. Keep in mind that the US government is in poor financial shape, and we have a very anti-tax sentiment in the country. So although one might be better off working in cryptography, or Common Criteria security, than, say, in the culinary or performing arts, it’s still wise to be prudent in expenditures, starting off from when one gets one’s first bank account.</p>
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<p>The vast majority of these companies’ revenues comes from advertising. In recessions, people spend less money, and advertisers spend less in concert, seeking the best return on investment, instead of attempting to saturate every media outlet. Those companies would have to cut back, as they did during the previous two recessions.</p>
<p>^I agree. In a recession, all companies suffer.</p>
<p>But Quora and social-media startups crashing will not cause a recession, so that’s irrelevant.</p>
<p>To be fair, neither did the dotcom bubble. There’s just not as much at stake in that field as in real estate + banking.</p>
<p>Well, ok, technically speaking, the bursting of the dotcom bubble didn’t cause the recession, but it contributed to it. Because of the immense amount of investment that had been made, not only in dotcom stocks, but in other companies that supplied equipment, infrastructure, etc. to those companies, the bursting of the bubble caused the other companies to also lose value. As a result, they had to let go of employees and scale back. Also, pertaining to today’s tech bubble, a lot of the growth in hiring of (computer) tech workers has come from social media companies and companies that supply them with equipment and infrastructure, such as cloud companies and mobile communications providers.</p>
<p>Dotcom was worth tens of billions. Social media is in the same range, adjusted for inflation, though I’d say it’s still probably worth more.
Housing, and the related banking, were worth TRILLIONS. The magnitude of that crisis far exceeds the economic importance of one booming part of high tech. No way it’s important enough to meaningfully impact the recession one way or the other.</p>
<p>As I wrote above, the bursting of the dotcom bubble affected hiring in the computer industry, both in the actual dotcom companies and the companies that they relied on. I did not mean to imply that it caused widespread economic trouble. But you have to admit that it did have an affect on employment prospects in the computer industry. It wasn’t so easy for people to get jobs just because they’d taken a few classes in web development. The social media bubble seems to be headed in that direction.</p>
<p>Regarding bioinformatics and the amount of data to be processed - my son tells me about the quantities of data that his department needs to process and I’m pretty amazed at the amount of data involved. It’s the kind of problem where they are on the bleeding edge of network throughput, storage (solid state, hard disk and memory) and compute power. Network, storage and compute power are advancing quite rapidly but this is one area that can easily soak it up.</p>
<p>From my perspective, a CS degree is completely worth it. My job prospects are almost assured, and I’ll be getting a ton of money to do something I enjoy. Also, none of that unpaid internship nonsense.</p>