Technology giants with a market value of more than $100 million, including Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com increased their work forces by at least 50 percent over the past two years, according to Bloomberg Inc. data.

According to the data, some small and mid-size businesses boosted payrolls by almost fivefold, underscoring the resilient demand for internet services, software and electronics.

Rohit Dhingra who was recently hired by a Silicon Valley company that produces computer gear said “A few years back, it just would have been a slam dunk that you want to do investment banking.” Dhingra who went to Columbia Business School in New York in the hopes of being hired by in a consulting job said, “The future of financial services does not seem as bright.”

Dhingra joins thousands of workers who switched to technology careers during the economic slump. While unemployment dropped in other sectors, technology companies continued to expand their workforce by at least 10 percent. That was more than any other industry group measured by Bloomberg.

Silicon Graphics International Inc., headquartered in Fremont, CA, increased its employment by 372 percent to 1,500.

Riverbed Technology Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, CA, increased its employment by 208 percent and Cupertino-based Apple Inc., which started with a larger employee base, grew 76 percent. That amounted to 26,100 new jobs.

Riverbed uses a team of 20 people who scour the country for new hires.

“We operate it like a search firm,” said Mike Guerchon, senior vice president of employee services at the San Francisco based network-equipment company. “It’s a tough battlefield for talent all the time.”

Technology hiring will not slow down any time soon. Amazon and Facebook Inc. each plan to add thousands of jobs in 2012. Tibco Software Inc., headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, is recruiting for their next decade of growth is also stepping up their hiring.

“We are hiring quite rapidly now, all in sales and service,” Tibco Chief Executive Officer Vivek Ranadive said recently at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s a good time to hire.”

Intel Corp. (INTC), the world’s largest chipmaker, increased its employment by almost 18,000 people in 2011. The hiring was driven by acquisitions and hiring in research and manufacturing.

High-tech giant Dell says it is looking to add more workers to its Santa Clara, CA location. The Company plans to add a second building to its current infrastructure to add an additional 600 jobs.

The company says it hopes to grow its Santa Clara location to employ 1,500 workers.

Hiring in the tech industry is gaining momentum and does not appear to be slowing down despite concerns of a second bubble.

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Article source: http://thejobmouse.com/2012/02/06/tech-hiring-in-san-francisco-bay-area-continues-to-gain-momentum/

When Robert Shiller, co-creator of the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices , speaks, he tends to make headlines, and yesterday was no different.

Claiming that he wasn’t making any predictions, he predicted that home prices could fall another 25 percent.

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he hedged. And there was the headline, tragic as it is.

I happened to be at the conference yesterday where he said that. In fact, I was a speaker/panelist at the Standard and Poors “Housing Summit 2011: Boom, Bust and Beyond.” And, no offense, but that wasn’t the headline. What really struck me was what he said right before that.

“Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can’t forecast the future because you have no comparison.”

That was not only the headline, but the theme of the conference, as I sat on a panel with economists from SP, Experian and Columbia Business School. Chip Case was there as well, disagreeing with Shiller on several points.

Audience members, largely from the finance industry, kept asking the same question in different ways, ‘When is this all going to get better??’

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43354956?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

When Robert Shiller, co-creator of the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices , speaks, he tends to make headlines, and yesterday was no different.

Claiming that he wasn’t making any predictions, he predicted that home prices could fall another 25 percent.

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he hedged. And there was the headline, tragic as it is.

I happened to be at the conference yesterday where he said that. In fact, I was a speaker/panelist at the Standard and Poors “Housing Summit 2011: Boom, Bust and Beyond.” And, no offense, but that wasn’t the headline. What really struck me was what he said right before that.

“Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can’t forecast the future because you have no comparison.”

That was not only the headline, but the theme of the conference, as I sat on a panel with economists from SP, Experian and Columbia Business School. Chip Case was there as well, disagreeing with Shiller on several points.

Audience members, largely from the finance industry, kept asking the same question in different ways, ‘When is this all going to get better??’

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43354956?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Word was last week that federal banking regulators, not the state attorneys general, were going to announce some kind of “enforcement action” against 14 big banks/servicers in the so-called “robo-signing” foreclosure paperwork mess today or tomorrow.

Now I’m told that may be a bit delayed, and now I’m reading the state attorneys general’s expected punitive monetary “settlement” is also in question.

The regulators are all about fixing and tightening the process of processing foreclosures. The AGs need to appease their constituents a bit more by getting something back from the big banks, which they claim got homeowners into this mess in the first place and then proceeded to mess it up even more when they couldn’t handle the outcome of their wrongdoings, i.e. foreclosures.

The controversy among the AGs is largely over principal forgiveness. Some have proposed a $20-25 billion fund that the banks would pay into that would go to lower the balance of troubled borrowers’ loans. A report today from three professors and banking experts, Charles Calomiris of Columbia Business School, Eric Higgens of Kansas State U and Joseph Mason, of the Wharton School of Business, argues that a settlement involving principal write down “would generate significant unintended negative consequences for housing and financial markets.”

Here’s the gist of it:

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42553732?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS