America’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has just recognized the King County Department of Transportation’s Metro Online Web site as one of the “Top Transit Traveler Information Websites” in the nation, one of four to be so selected in 2004. King County traffic could be regarded as anything but high-throughput. The roadway bandwidth is so congested [...]
by Dave Chase, Altus Alliance “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki is reviewed by Altus Alliance’s Dave Chase who shares what marketers and technology companies might learn from Surowiecki’s insights. Surowiecki aims to be the next New Yorker contributor to have a mass appeal book, ala Malcolm Gladwell. He clearly wants to position this [...]
by Dave Chase, Altus Alliance Google’s Gmail has received quite a bit of attention lately but nearly all the focus has been on controversies surrounding privacy issues and what it means for Hotmail and Yahoo. There’s been little discussion of what marketers should be doing in preparation for what will likely be a significant market [...]
by Erin Jansen, author of NetLingo, The Internet Dictionary Having lived in places like New York & Paris, L.A. & London, Munich & San Francisco, I’ve built up a reputation for wanderlust. It makes for some very nice conversation, especially when you’re in the throngs of adapting to a new place. You see, my dream [...]
by Jay Boynton 3.29.2004 Making industry predictions is a risky venture, especially when dealing with technology in the Northwest. But every year the WSA gathers round a hand-picked panel of experts to hear what they have to say and this year’s prognostications meeting witnessed some impressive leaps of logic, hunches and humor. We’ve had Q1 [...]
by D. David Beckman 2.25.2004 Even as a handful of anti-offshore outsourcing measures have failed to gain momentum in the Washington state legislature, lawmakers in Olympia are convening in an attempt to gauge the impact and scope of the outsourcing issue. “In some respects, Washington state is ground zero,” said Dr. Catherine L. Mann, a [...]
by Dave Chase 1.02.2004 It wouldn’t be a new year without handing out some unofficial awards for 2003. “You can observe a lot by watching.” Yogi Berra The start of a new year is a good time to take heed of the pivotal events that shaped the preceding 12 months. Let’s recap the big hits [...]
11.17.2003 From Sioux Falls to Seoul, Xbox Live gamers are celebrating the one-year anniversary of the fastest growing unified broadband gaming service ever. A vibrant and growing community half a million strong, Xbox Live gamers have an insatiable appetite for riveting, interactive and social game experiences. A recently released survey by Zelos Group finds that [...]
9.8.2003 While the public is well informed on the recent boom and bust of Seattle’s high-tech industry, an important part of the picture has faded from popular view. The IT workforce that bore the brunt of this downturn, shedding 10,000 jobs in just one year, has continued to search for footing and face the realities [...]
3.20.2003 Getty Images has completed a major new release of its Web site in order to give customers greater freedom, selection of imagery and convenience through an enhanced royalty-free image offering, a complete revitalization of digital film and the launch of a full-service online photo assignments offering. “We have listened to our customers and have [...]
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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]