HP and Micron can’t carry the Valley forever
Here’s my news tip for Boise (especially any elected or wannabe/soon to be elected officials):
LaserJet’s and DRAM are not going to carry the valley like they once did.
Can we expect to see more layoffs in Boise? It’s too hard to realistically predict any specific events tied to any specific market activity. Maybe not now. Maybe not in the 100’s or 1,000’s at a time but over time we will see continued adjustments as business and economic situations change.
Unless HP or Micron invest in new industries and actually base them out of Boise, we will see continual attrition.
And where will those nice corporate salaries go to? Well there’s always Morrison Knudsen, WGI, Albertsons, OreIda, Boise Cascade, Zilog, or more likely they’ll go out of state.
Boise has very few solid medium sized businesses here (MPC has been limping along for longer than most people thought they would). We need a good base of medium sized businesses to support our economy and in another 5-10 years replace the growth that Micron and HP brought here during the 80’s and 90’s. BVEP will never get a medium sized business to relocate to the Boise Valley.
However if I were Mayor Beiter, Governor Otter or the head of BVEP I wouldn’t be wasting my time and taxpayer dollars going to Cuba over and over again without anything to show for it. I’d be in the lobby of Microsoft and Sun Microsystems every month doing whatever I could to encourage them to not only keep their newly acquired Boise presence but expand here. (We’ve got this great complex, or two, by the River on Park Center no one is currently using.)
IMNHO (In my never humble opinion) our best bet is to start investing in our local small technology focused businesses. And by investing I don’t mean handouts. I mean giving them the real resources they need:
- Well educated college graduates (which starts at high school now)
- A good statewide infrastructure that includes roads and broadband
- And a local government that *gets it* and can evangelize for them
Local tech companies provide the best opportunity for growth with the least amount of investment. Local tech companies don’t need any tax breaks to be here, they already made that decision. Today’s tech companies don’t consume major amounts or electricity and water. Today’s tech companies provide an average wage that makes the average wage at Micron laughable. And finally, today’s tech companies provide their employees the skills to go off and start other tech companies, not go off and work in a call center.
Technorati Tags: HP, Boise, Micron, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems,
This is an enormous understatement - but well said Tac! Enjoyed your ‘rant’ and insights into HP. But more than that, I enjoyed your perspective (voiced by colleagues at the last Tech Boise meetup) about what our leaders need to be doing to support the tech companies already here.
Kudos!
Amen, brother Tac! Very well stated.
I completely agree that our most promising source of medium-sized tech companies is our present assortment of smaller tech companies. And the added value of growing them is that their larger presence in the area may eventually attract new medium-sized tech companies from out-of-state.
And the fact that every comp sci grad from BSU has on average 3 job offers before graduation (and many leave the state) definitely highlights a critical need to increase the supply of highly-trained local tech workers. You’re correct in asserting that this should start at the high school level (if not sooner).
I’ve only been round these parts for a year, but I’m already tired of Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake, and Denver consistently drinking our milkshake.
Jess,
Most people in the valley have very little understanding about how HP is set up, what the Boise site is/does and how it effects the local tech ecosystem. Heck a lot of HP employees don’t even fully get all of that.
Patrick,
If we can keep attracting the right kind of people (like yourself) and keep more of our “home grown” tech workforce, that’s the first step. But you are absolutely correct that we need to get a bigger pipe in the education system, because I really like milkshakes
Make is easy for companies to get started and expand here, invest in private and public education, use the gov’t bully pulpit to support entrepreneurs until the legislature gets enlightened like our friends in Utah, and move the business page (er, I mean section) from behind the coupons to at least in front of the sports section…..
Tac - nicely crafted with passion & balance.
Jeff is right about the bully pulpit - it’s very visible in entrepreneurial places and it costs so little.
And everyone is right about education. It’s not just spending more, but getting it better aligned. (Getting the right flavors of milkshake? LOL) We need to make sure that CWI works to support the right kind of workforce - CCs usually are pretty damned good at being market-driven, but they need to hear from the market (which, uh, is… us.)
I would submit that there’s no shortage of political people who think the “tech” folks are whining. And anti-rural. Isn’t Boise a top city to start businesses? To do business? Why then should they need help? We need to answer that better. And we can.
I would also submit that we need to make the case for this truth: This is indeed good for the whole state. It’s weird that the people who seem to understand that truth the best are… on the rural side of the fence. The Idaho Rural Partnership is committed to entrepreneurship. IEDA gets it. But how do we reach across that still-growing divide?
OK, here’s a thought. I dug up Erik Page’s great little handbook for how politicos can best sell entrepreneurship. The focus needs to be on entrepreneurship, not just “tech” - that this is about economic growth…. resilient, self-renewing growth.
One nice thing about Schumpeterian creative destruction is that it’s followed by creative construction.
But I think back to my very first TechBoise post - we have a great case to be made and we haven’t done that… yet.
p.s. make my milkshake banana-chocolate, LOL
Great summary and insight into the situation at hand.
One thing that is starting to happen is the ‘layoffs’ or role reductions in Micron. It’s starting in the IT Department as they start the transition of IT people to an outsourcer outside of US.
Would been great if the local economy could asbord those IT folks but majority are having to move away.
Nice to see similar opinions shared. I just stumbled across this site courtesy of google. I was curious about the results of HP’s “reorganization” that was supposed to occur Friday. I’m currently a compsci major at BSU and I plan on moving out of state for employment. Seems a shame to do all this work, doing math until my ears bleed, and not make the appropriate level of income due. (That and I’m ready for a change of scenery from this town). Anyway, I’ll be bookmarking this blog and making regular “stops”.
~Todd.