Publishing Bill Gates “Annual Letter” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the world has become a tradition here at Seattle24x7 for the past three years which we are only too proud to uphold. As Bill introduces this year’s letter, he writes: “Whether you believe it a moral imperative or in the rich world’s enlightened [...]
For the opening chapters of his professional life story, Joe Justice assumed the lead character’s role of software consultant, writ large. So when Joe set out down the road to solve a classic hardware problem like how to build a motor vehicle that could exceed 100 miles to the gallon, his mechanical thinking gave equal [...]
UW’s Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering, has been named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow – colloquially known as the MacArthur “Genius” Award. Each year, the MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships of $500,000 to roughly twenty “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a [...]
Ten years ago Charles Brennick returned from Costa Rica with a desire to help underserved communities around the world gain access to technology and the Internet. Starting with a handful of volunteers and his laptop, he created InterConnection. Today, the organization has shipped more than 25,000 computers to organizations in 40 different countries and given [...]
Since the dawn of the digital age, the most potent ideas have been described as being the most “disruptive” for their transformative power to realign the status quo. By the sheer size of its revenues and its user base, the media properties it dominates, and the industries it has displaced or recast, the Google AdWords [...]
As every climber knows, it is an inner fire which must be stoked in order to defy gravity and ascend the vertical path that leads to a summit. And like every climber who is also a software developer knows, each summit represents only one milestone. The skyward journey is the real reward. The path that [...]
As many a Seattle blogger can tell you, the goal of getting a WordPress blog done vs. getting it done right can mean getting to Dunn, Seattle WordPress coach, trainer and seminar instrutor Bob Dunn. “It’s simple: I love to teach WordPress,” he says. “I have a passion for helping solopreneurs, small biz owners and [...]
“I will pay $50 for 2 tickets to Laser Bieber at the Pacific Science Center!” “”I will pay $300 for two box seats at the next Mariner’s game against the Yankees!” “I will pay $75 to anyone who can bring me a copy of The King’s Speech and two pints from Pyramid Brewery.” Got a [...]
“I am a man who was at the wrong place at the right time,” writes Andrew Schorr, author of “The Web-Savvy Patient, An Insider’s Guide to Navigating the Internet When Facing Medical Crisis.” “I received a diagnosis that changed my life. My hope is that what I have learned and the people I have met [...]
According to Malcolm Gladwell, the social theorist and best selling author of the seminal work, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, “the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” There are the Salesman, [...]
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Feb 6 2012
Techspresso Shots: PS Top Tech Talent Changing Posts, Places and Partners, Avg. Salary $90,000+
Like the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley, the “Emerald Triangle” of Seattle, Redmond and Kirkland has become a many faceted jewel of a marketplace for elite technical and management talent, and strong software design and programming professionals throughout the ranks.
As the NW tech world turns, management turnover churns with it. Watching the direction of “HR talent flow” from one company to another, is a fair predictor of who is up and who is down in any given industry category at a particular time.
Take “third-party apps” for example, and the shifting momentum in that market space between Microsoft and Amazon. Last year, Charlie Kindel (no Kindle “name-pun” intended), who was a Microsoft general manager leading third-party app initiatives, left the company to launch a start-up as yet unrealized. At the time Kindel called Windows Phone “the best product Microsoft has ever built.”
Now, his replacement, Brandon Watson is leaving Microsoft to join Amazon.com’s Kindle team also in third-part app development. Watson’s Twitter account confirmed the move. “The rumors are true. The team is in great hands,” he wrote on Friday. “I’ll miss working on #wpdev.”
Mary Jo Foley notes at ZDNet that the Amazon group Watson is joining makes Kindle apps for a variety of platforms, including Windows Phone. Watson leaves Windows Phone with a legacy of accomplishment According to AllAboutWindowsPhone.com, more than 60,000 items have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Still it seems a bit surprising that the degree of overlap in the mobile app field is not restricted by a non-compete or non-disclosure agrement that would make it difficult to make such a switch “on the fly.”
Our talented cadre of Seattle workers are earning an average of $90,000 per year, up 5 percent from last year, plus an annual bonus of close to $10,000 according to a survey conducted by TechFlash. This compares favorably with the average annual wage of $81,327 for tech professionals nationwide.
Like the Microsoft and Amazon parallelism, the Bay Area has two opposing tech poles in Google and Apple. In an HR switch last week, Google purportedly pulled off a coup by hiring Apple’s senior director of product integrity for a secret project, according to VentureBeat. The hiring is interesting because the Department of Justice is investigating Google and Apple for allegedly working out a “no poach” agreement where the companies — along with Pixar, Lucasfilm, Intel and Intuit — allegedly conspired to suppress employee compensation by not poaching each other’s employees.
According to this Linkedin page, Simon Prakash worked at Apple for more than eight years where he was most recently the senior director of product integrity responsible for product quality across all of Apple’s products, from iPhones to Macs.
Now he’ll be working for Google on a secret project, presumably run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who is in charge of a variety of secret research and development projects at Google. The company recently acquired Motorola Mobility, and it has a wide variety of hardware projects under way that Prakash might be working on. [24x7]