I do think there is a bubble of people hyping startups. Facebook got a stupid valuation and everyone started reporting that the 1999-2001 bubble was back. But that was just Goldman Sachs bullshitting everyone. It doesn't mean every startup has a stupid valuation now.
Can you explain why someone would leave that much money in there? Are there tables that you can bring 250k to? Do these sites pay interest?
How do you trust these sites? A casino in Las Vegas will get huge fines if one of the employees rips off players. How do you know some internal IT guy isn't cheating you?
I would recommended hiring people that are the best fit for the position. There are plenty of reasons to hire someone that will do a good job, rather than a code ninja that finishes projects in 15 minutes.
You don't know the value of employee X until after he has agreed to compensation and joined the company. If he joins and never completes a single task he is assigned, then yes the founders were 1000x more valuable. If he joints and is able to find 10x more customers than you had before than no he is not 1000x less valuable.
Is the valuation of FB, Twitter reasonable or is there a lot of money moving in based on self-fulfilling speculation that this is "the next big thing"?
If your perception of offshoring is "lets hire developers in country X and save 40% because developers make 40% less there." Then the answer is NO. Even if you can find the perfect employees that will do great work for 40% less it is only a matter of time before they will find better paying jobs, and that turnover will kill your 40% savings.
If you can decode a way to 'beat the market' that means once you start beating the market someone else is loosing. They will adjust their trading techniques and your "algorithms" are now wrong
Attitudes like this are why I did CompE instead of CS. Yes you do learn OO in early CS classes, however you can use procedural programming in the real world to get excellent results. It is "bad code", but a lot of coders are interested in results more than "the current landscape of programming".
Facebook is very similar to vmware. I expect it would follow a similar path in stock price. Currently vmware is trading at 140 p/e ratio. People are afraid to miss the next Google, Microsoft, etc.. SO they are willing to buy the latest trend. If facebook made $2 a year off 300M users they would have a market cap of 60B with a 100 P/E ratio.
Returns on stocks do not compound. If you bought a stock at X and sold it at Y your gain/loss percentage is simply Y/X. There is no reason to use the Pert formula.
Is there going to be a time in the next 5 years where most people change their views about the [usefulness/profitability] of [investing/creating/buying] [housing/start-ups/restaurants]?
If your answer is yes then there is currently a bubble.
I hate to say it but I would use this if my peers were just my Facebook friends. not that I don't trust 1024 bit encryption, I just don't like my info on strangers boxes even thought it is encrypted
I wonder if it would be called innovation if we called these 'Products' what they really are. CDO='insurance on loans', Synthetic CDOS = 'making bets on other people's loans' When Las Vegas casinos come up with new ways to gamble is it called innovation?
To get rid of the Fake Work, we would have to be honest about our current work. but upper management doesn't want honesty. They want to see consistent numbers always increasing. If you have 3 great quarters then 1 bad one they will be pissed, but not if you have 4 OK quarters