Some additional thoughts:
Maybe Thiel is right with his thesis. But I think we don't see the impacts of the latest "technology" like Facebook and Twitter or any social network that might come as a successor clearly yet. I had the same opinions, because it doesn't really feal like rocket science or flying cars. A German professor called Peter Kruse, changed my mind. He has a really interesting perspective on todays interconectedness using a system theroetical view:
His thesis is (roughly):
What we are currently doing is rapidly increasing the interconnectedness or the networking density of our society almost worldwide (e.g. social networks Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, you name it) and the devices we use (e.g. IoT), we have also increased spontaneous activities in these networks (e.g. web 2.0 services where people can be interactive), additionally we have implemented functions that enable circular stimulus in these networks (retweet and share functions). If these 3 effects come together there is the tendency that these systems will carry signals that resonate and amplify themselfs. It is almost impossible to forecast when and how this happens, because these networks are non-linear. If you post something that resonates with a lot of people you can be very powerful from one moment to another. Technology is only the enabler here and I have no doubt that this has a huge impact on society - see the revolution in Egypt for example. One outcome is a shift of power, because it is really hard to control these networks. Even though we have very sophisticated mass-surveilance most events happen very uncontrolled.
Interesting idea to use the framework of S curves on this observation. But I think that the typical S curve model will not work on big innovations that are not disruptive towards or at least strongly related to each other in terms of use cases. What you mean is rather the concept of "Kondratiev Waves" [1]
Yes this might be a dumb way of deciding where to work, especially because you might be able to negotiate your salary based on the competitive offers you might get.
Ask yourself:
- with which of the companies (mission and strategy, as well as customers) can you identify yourself best?
- where do you see yourself having a more pleasent work environment in regards to the people you would be working with and the working culture/environment?
- what are your future career targets and which opportunity might increase the probability to reach them? what is the potential for the role?
- what might be the goals, and can you identify with them as well as add value, of your direct reports?
I still wonder about the role of CloudCar in regards to Google and to Android. At least the Startup is somehow connected to Andy Rubin [1], the original founder of Android. CloudCar also has some good engineers that know the automotive infotainment space quite well.
"The startup may not be Rubin’s next place of employment, but he is connected to it: after the rumor hit, and then he denied it on Twitter, he further clarified in a Google+ post that CloudCar “are a group of friends who I give free office space to in my incubator in Los Altos.”" [1]
Same for Volkswagen which owns amongst others: Audi, Bentley, Skoda and of course Volkswagen itself. But these "brands" at least partially have their own development departments. Audi for example operates quite independent in many regards.
I have seen some statements of Perlman and persons related to him or his companies, that this technology is not only applicable to communication networks. That, and the recent patent applications, make me think that he is talking about wireless power.
I really wonder if, and I have some doubts that, the underlying technology is at all feasible for such an application?
Hmmmm... at first I felt I have to complain, then I remind myself that new designs mostly are very controversial because humans on average don't like changes that require them to adapt to a new usability pattern. So maybe I need some time to adapt.
Here is my first opinion: The new page looks a lot more fancy and modern, but the company detail pages just waste a lot of space. The older version wasn't that pretty, but it had all necessary informations on one page without much scrolling. Now I need to scroll a lot, which is a thing that I really don't like. Might be better on tablets, thou.
The press is all over this topic, but as usual doesn't do its research well enough. Some insight: the bug was submitted in December 2011 and was only present in OpenSSL 1.0.1 - not in previous releases. 1.0.1 was released on 14th of March 2012. It usually takes a long time until this new versions get largely adopted into other software. Even today 1.0.1 isn't used everywhere. That leads me to doubt that the agencies could have used this vulnerability for a very long time. A year seams reasonable, years rather not. It's very sad thou, that they choose not to contribute to secure software and rather exploit the vulnerability.
It’s very interesting to see this being announced now. The space of “native-to-the-web”-frameworks is very noisy lately. I wonder which moves the other developers of frameworks, especially in regards to Web3D games, will make next: Artillery? Goo Technologies? Scirra? Ludei? PlayCanvas? Impact? ...?
There is quite a bunch of free engines already out there: Babylon.js, Copperlicht, CubicVR, TheeJS, ...
The native engine builders: Epic, Crytek and Unity are also adding some more pressure on the game sector in this field with their announcements to also move into the web and alter their price schemes.
Musk bought himself into the game. There is actually some more dirty little secrets to the whole story. It looks like Musk bought himself in and then overtook the whole company. In 2009 after Eberhard (real founder and CEO) was kicked out, he filed a lawsuite against Musk - it got settled for god knows how many dollars.
I wonder how fast everyone forgets the real founders of Tesla: Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and all credit is put on Elon. I am sure he deserves a lot of credit for his foresight, strategic decisions and also his execution... Bottom line he bought himself into the electric car game, which was itself a very good strategic move.
There are quite some apprenticeships in the field of IT! They are existing for quite some time now - at least for 13 years:
(sorry for caps lock - this is copy and paste)
- FACHINFORMATIKER ANWENDUNGSENTWICKLUNG (software eng./dev.)
- FACHINFORMATIKER SYSTEMINTEGRATION (sys. integration)
- IT-SYSTEM-ELEKTRONIKER (IT technicians)
- IT-SYSTEM-KAUFMANN (IT business)
- INFORMATIKKAUFMANN (again IT business)
- Mathematisch-technische Software-Entwickler
- Informationselektroniker
- Fachangestellte für Medien- und Informationsdienste
- Mediengestalter Digital und Print
In conclusion: the chamber of commerce ideed did its job. If they did it very well is a question of perspecitve.
To bring this into startup context: Most very early Startups won't take apprenticeships as this is an additional workload and overhead (apprentices want to be tought...) that might not pay off in the short term. As an apprentice I would also think twice about joining a startup as one needs at least 2 1/2 years to finish the apprenticeship. (Startups might not exist that long.)