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A Market Update from ML USA Partner Greg Russell

20 November 2008

Gregs take on the current atmosphere for hiring in the Bay Area

Any update on the US job market must include mention of the broader economic situation here at the moment.  There is  certainly enough bad news to go around with signs of more to come for the US economy, but the good news is that the tech sector will remain fairly robust.

We have seen an initial round of layoffs but most of those have been opportunistic in the sense that companies have used the current environment and cost cutting advice from their venture capitalists as a chance to trim the fat that may have built up over the past couple years of boom.  Going forward many of those companies will need to reload to attack opportunities that will no doubt arise.

Companies that are already well funded and are still driving toward product launches and other significant milestones will still need to hire and there will be added pressure to do so as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.

Down in the hiring trenches, we haven’t seen much change over the past two years.  It’s still a job-seekers’ market to some extent, with some roles (notably software developers and user experience people) more difficult than others.  We continue to see an influx of strong people across many different roles coming out of Yahoo and the good news for startups needing to turn their brilliant concepts into reality is that there seem to be a number of very talented product management folks on the market at the moment.

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Written by: Greg Russell

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