Bill Gates has released his 2011 Annual Letter on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the third such letter since the tech visionary became a full-time philanthropist. The timely letter points to seven initiatives that are global priorities and emphasizes the need for renewed investment in foreign aid to prevent societies from spiraling into [...]
If you haven’t yet discovered the Take Control catalogue of eBooks, the easiest-to-grok, human-sized, How To trail guides of the most popular hardware and software products on the planet, well, you really ought to exercise more control over your high-tech lifestyle. From digital cameras to smartphones, to the sweet i-Suite of iTunes, iPods, iPads and [...]
The fight to end global poverty is an epic struggle wrapped in a paradox. Eugene Cho has confronted the reality distortion field first hand and has made it his mission to put it in the proper perspective. To get real about poverty, according to Eugene, we need to understand how we fit in as fellow humans, [...]
It’s not a gathering of Comic-Con NW or a Swords and Lasers meetup, although the sc-fi connections are palpable. Is that Bill Gates, the boy wonder, or Jeff Bezos, possessed of Amazonian strength, behind the mask of those costumed vigilantes seen patrolling Seattle streets after dusk? Like the scientists gone supernova in Watchmen, or the nerds [...]
It’s been an amazing month for Andy Sack, the Executive Director of TechStars Seattle & the Managing Partner of the Founder’s Co-op, who has been overseeing the corporate gene pool that is spiraling like a helix in his northwest venture lab. Andy’s companies, arguably the nucleus of Seattle’s future tech successes, went under the microscope of investor [...]
Conrad Saam has made a name for himself in the world of SEO. He’s a veritable “No-it-all.” Make no mistake. Conrad is not a polite contrarian when it comes to weighing marketing strategy and tactics, but an unabashed SEO debunker who has unmasked, lampooned and otherwise myth-busted the worn out fables of SEO doctrine. As [...]
In an age where new eBook software and readers are materializing at an astonishing rate (Kindle, iPad and Nook among others). In a world where audible versions of fiction and non-fiction are being produced and distributed via Audible and iTunes to numerous portable MP3 players. At a time when animated book graphics are decorating “apps” for [...]
Rob Ousbey, Distilled Consulting’s Seattle Manager, Got a Unique Preview of Google Instant Search and Posted it Online It’s after hours and you’re trying to decide whether to surf the local brew pub scene or the Web. Unbeknownst to you, you are about to make a startling discovery. Which world-changing, technology breakthrough would you prefer to [...]
Heard the latest news about WordPress 3.0, the most feature-packed, versatile version yet of the world’s most popular blogging software? If you said yes, chances are you read about it on a WordPress powered blog or CMS-driven news site like the one you’re reading now. The WordPress platform appears to have inherited the mantle of [...]
Meet the movers, shakers, digerati, cognoscenti, imedia moguls and uber-geeks who should be part of your social network. The “Who’s Who” of local Tech-dom now appearing, or on deck, in Seattle24x7 People.
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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]