One example of this surge in tech positions in the Bay Area comes from Lookout Mobile Security, which relocated near San Francisco’s South Park in order to acquire more space.

Six months after relocating, the smartphone security firm is looking to add even more office space, with the goal of doubling its staff by the end of 2011, according to the news provider.

“Every person who is buying a smart phone today has a computer in their pocket and they realize they need to keep it safe,” John Hering, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of the firm, told the news source. “That has created a major opportunity for Lookout.”

The Lookout expansion is indicative of tech jobs throughout the area, has San Francisco had an estimated 30,700 such positions by the end of last year, according to the news source. That number is just below the 32,800 peak of early 2001, according to analysis conducted by real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

In the Silicon Valley, there were 106,300 tech jobs in the fourth quarter, just shy of the 112,700 peak, according to the analysis.

“Silicon Valley really caught fire,” Colin Yasukochi, director of research at Jones Lang LaSalle, told the Chronicle. “The economic recovery here is being led by technology.”

Some of the major companies that have contributed to the surging tech industry throughout the region include Facebook, Motorola, Google and Hewlett-Packard, the news source said.

The San Francisco Business Times reports that the increasing number of tech jobs has also caused the price of office space rental to increase by between 10 and 25 percent over the past year in the area.
 

Article source: http://www.job.com/career-advice/local-job-news/tech-jobs-surging-in-san-francisco-$438031524-1230.html

Six months, millions of new users and a doubling of its staff later, the smart-phone security company is already on the hunt for additional real estate, with the hope of moving in the second half of the year. By the end of 2011, the company expects to double its staff again, to about 100 employees.

“Every person who is buying a smart phone today has a computer in their pocket and they realize they need to keep it safe,” said John Hering, chief executive officer and co-founder of the firm. “That has created a major opportunity for Lookout.”

This growth story is playing out repeatedly in the Bay Area, pushing tech sector jobs near the all-time highs set during the dot-com boom – if they haven’t already surpassed them. Niches that hardly existed a few years ago, like mobile apps, social media and cloud computing, are now driving the region’s economic recovery.

Near peak levels

By the end of last year, San Francisco had an estimated 30,700 tech jobs, just shy of the 32,800 around the peak in early 2001, real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle found in an analysis of state employment data. In Silicon Valley, tech positions reached 106,300 in the fourth quarter, nearing the 112,700 crest.

Figures for the first three months of the year aren’t yet available, but it’s clear the numbers have continued to rise. Tech companies like Facebook, Motorola, VMware, Hewlett-Packard and Google have leased 3.5 million square feet of space in Silicon Valley this year alone, Jones Lang LaSalle said in its report. That’s the equivalent of filling the Transamerica Pyramid seven times.

“Silicon Valley really caught fire,” said Colin Yasukochi, director of research at Jones Lang LaSalle. “The economic recovery here is being led by technology.”

San Francisco had 2.5 million square feet of tech leasing since the beginning of 2010, and has 90 firms scouting the market for another 2.3 million square feet.

The recent growth in the industry is single-handedly transforming the conditions of the commercial real estate sector in key tech markets. In Palo Alto, Cupertino and San Francisco’s South of Market district, office rents increased by 10 to 25 percent in the last year, as vacancies dropped by half, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

For the most common type of office buildings in SoMa, average rents climbed 16.4 percent to nearly $33.50 per square foot, as vacancy plummeted from 17.4 percent to 8 percent.

It’s become the place many tech companies want to be, with Zynga, Google, TechCrunch and Mozilla leasing significant space in the district during the last year. Hering said it’s the only place Lookout plans to search for its new space.

“There’s a huge advantage of being in SoMa, in terms of being surrounded by great resources and great minds,” he said.

Growing sector

But the tech sector represents a large and growing part of the Bay Area’s economy overall.

Jobs in the industry now account for 16.6 percent of private-sector employment in San Francisco, up from a low of 12.5 percent in September 2003, according to data from the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics in Berkeley. Tech represents 25.2 percent of employment in Silicon Valley, up from 24 percent in December 2006.

Still, in an area badly burned by the last technology-sector meltdown, concerns have already begun to surface about the sustainability of the new boom.

Yasukochi took a hard look at this issue in the first-quarter report, and concluded that there’s “no bubble in sight.”

He noted that price-to-earnings ratios, which represent the amount of money investors are willing to pay for every dollar of company profit, are far more reasonable today than they were in 2000. At the time, the P/E ratio for the SP Information Technology Index stood above 70. Today it’s just more than 16.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/03/BUHP1JB97H.DTL