Silicon Valley workers offer to work for no pay

Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 3:54 AM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 2044 -- 7/29/2009 >>>>>

High tech American workers are finally doing what they have to do to compete
with H-1Bs and offshoring -- they are working for free. The only way it can
get more "competitive" would be for Americans to pay companies for the
privilege of working, or perhaps they can pay a rental fee for sitting at a
company owned cubicle.

You gotta enjoy the positive tone of the Sacbee article. It talks about
history repeating itself, as Stanford graduates are treated to cheap cocktails
before they get into line to sign up to work for a few worthless stock
options. Haven't we seen that happen before???

An international business graduate likened this trend towards free labor as a
way for Americans to get back to their core values. What core values is she
talking about -- slavery?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2056443.html

Seeking comeback, Silicon Valley workers offer to work for no pay
phecht@sacbee.com Published Sunday, Jul. 26, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- Soon after earning his MBA from Stanford, Andrey Abramov
launched his first technology startup -- a cell phone e-mail service he says
"died horribly" in the 2000 dot-com crash.

He recovered to earn "hundreds of thousands of dollars" a year in ventures
including call centers, social networks, anti-piracy software for video games
and a Web marketing portal for brain exercises.

Yet today, Abramov, 39, finds himself among newly busted entrepreneurs and
displaced technology workers. And he's offering to work for free for a chance
at another comeback.

In the Silicon Valley region, unemployment tops 11 percent and investment
capital has all but dried up. Here, unemployed tech professionals are showing
up in droves at Bay Area mixers -- and signing on en masse on career
networking sites -- to volunteer labor and expertise in exchange for equity
shares in Silicon Valley startups that have no money to pay them.

At the Metreon retail center in San Francisco recently, Abramov joined dozens
of unemployed or underemployed Stanford graduates for a reception with under-
funded dreamers, from Internet marketers to video game designers to wireless
gadget makers.

He stood there wearing a stick-on badge listing his expertise -- "biz
development and strategy, engineering, marketing, project management" -- as 30
companies made their pitches for people willing to invest five hours or more a
week in free "equity" work.

"If you are a company, please buy a job seeker a drink," said Julie Greenberg,
co-founder of a Web networking company, Jobnob, which sponsored the gathering.
"They're willing to work for free. It's the least you can do."

From San Jose to Alameda, and Santa Cruz to San Francisco, it is the new
survival story of Silicon Valley.

With a half-million Internet, computer, biotech and financial services
workers, the pool of jobless talent here is so deep that Jobnob scheduled
separate college-themed "happy hours" for tech professionals from Stanford,
Harvard and Berkeley alone.

Seeking to pair job seekers with startups, Jobnob began receptions with an
open event last month at a San Francisco wine bar. It expected a turnout of 30
people. About 300 out-of-work professionals showed up offering their services.

"This is a time that's really unique, where so many people with five, 10 and
15 years' experience and advanced degrees are out of work," Greenberg said.
"Sitting at home looking at the Internet listings is not going to do it for
them."

Simultaneously, the "angels" of Silicon Valley -- wealthy individual investors
critical to tech startups -- have suffered huge stock portfolio losses and
largely taken flight.

So volunteer professionals are helping fuel the dreams of cash-strapped
entrepreneurs such as Steven Echtman, chief executive of startup HearPlanet.

At the Metreon, Echtman worked the room and his iPhone. He showed off his
application that lets travelers use mobile devices to get instant narrative
guides for worldwide points of interest from Inca ruins in Urubamba, Peru, to
the Pashupatinath temple in Katmandu, Nepal.

He isn't yet "cash positive" in his dream to build the de facto "auto guide to
the world." But Echtman has signed on four equity volunteers, including
Allison Sophia Jones, an Internet sales representative and former Davis
resident who found him through the "meetup" link of a networking group, SF New
Tech.

Jones, a 2003 international business graduate from the University of San
Francisco, has been seeking another opportunity since a movie downloading
venture she worked for went out of business 10 months ago.

"We just basically ran out of money. I hate when that happens," she said.
"They let me go along with my whole sales team."

With hundreds of applicants for job postings, Jones said restless
professionals with free time "are getting back to their core values and
choosing to put forth their energies for something they believe in."

Bruce Runyan, 55, a Stanford grad with a B.A. in physics and a master's in
operations research, worked 20 years as a vice president at software and
telecommunications companies in California. But after a recent layoff,
employers have largely brushed him off as overqualified.

So Runyan came to the Metreon looking to volunteer "for a team-level job to
help build a company."

Carl Guardino, president of of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said the
current economic downturn is viewed as less devastating than the 2000 tech
stocks meltdown. That wiped out hundreds of paper millionaires and ended the
glitz and swagger of the Internet technology gold rush.

Now, Guardino said, an "ownership culture -- an egalitarian culture of Silicon
Valley lives on," as unemployed professionals offer services in hope "of being
part of owning a company."

Abramov thought he had a winner in his last venture -- WiFi Commute, a service
designed to provide wireless access to rail commuters on Caltrain routes. But
his business collapsed when he was unable to negotiate terms for buying and
reselling bandwidth.

"My startup is dead. It's like losing a baby after taking it to the limit,"
he said.

His finances are so bad, Abramov said, that soon "you'll see me in the soup
kitchen." And yet, at the Metreon event, a setting remarkably upbeat, he spoke
about volunteering to help somebody else's startup succeed.

"Maybe I'll find an interesting project to buy me time or the right startup
where I can fit in," he said.

There were plenty of options to ponder.

A young entrepreneur was seeking a business developer for an Internet
carpooling network he billed as "the new transportation paradigm for the 21st
century." A firm called Blue Tweet wanted sales associates to market online
retailers on Twitter.

Randi Kofman, whose Palo Alto Adiri Inc. sells premium baby products, sought
an Internet social media marketer "to reach mommy bloggers and tell them we
are listening."

"We're a very smart company with a lot of stock options," she said.
"Because we don't have a lot of cash."

Jobnob co-founder Alan Shusterman, an Internet advertising product manager in
tech's go-go days, said the event in a Metreon business suite offered quite a
contrast.

He recalled lavish parties of the mid-'90s, when Oracle Inc. once rented out
San Francisco's Nob Hill, including the Fairmont, Mark Hopkins and Stanford
Court hotels, for thousands of celebrants.

"It was unbelievable. There was so much buzz. Everyone was worth $10 million
on paper. And then everything crashed," he said.

This time, Shusterman said, "there is no somberness, and the fact that these
are such difficult economic times is actually spawning innovation."

Navneet Aron hopes so. The 30-year-old former Intuit engineer manager formed a
firm -- mobiQpons -- that allows people to instantly call up coupons on mobile
devices and have retailers scan the devices or punch in the coupon numbers.

"I have access to talent that ordinarily you couldn't get at an early stage
for a company," said Aron, as he called up coupons for Planet Hollywood, Home
Depot and Bath and Body Works on his iPhone. He is seeking equity volunteer
interface engineers and social media markers.

His business venture "was the best idea I've heard today," said Heidi Klauser,
a '92 Stanford grad, retailer and former tech professional looking to find a
new opportunity through equity work.

"No one in this room is living the dream of the pre-2000 days, when everybody
had multimillion-dollar funding," she said. "They're not living the dream. But
they're still dreaming it."

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