View from the Valley
Be honest. How many of you can recite your company's mission statement or, even tougher, its official goals and objectives? I, of course, can remember all those of my esteemed employers. But the people at Cisco Systems' headquarters in Silicon Valley are not so gifted.
Perhaps we should show a little understanding. They may have worked at some of Cisco's scores of acquisitions in the past and been obliged to learn too many mission-critical, customer-driven success-o-gram statements.
Unfortunately for them, Cisco chief executive officer John Chambers is not happy with this state of affairs. He regularly gives his staff the seventh degree at meetings to see if they can remember the company's five most important goals. But so many managers can only get three or four right that Chambers has decided to do something about it. He had the goals printed on the back of the company's car keys so nobody has any excuse for forgetting them.
It's too hot to handle
Sun Microsystems has had something more to gloat about recently than Microsoft's legal difficulties.
Microsoft bought internet email provider Hotmail last December and immediately embarked on the task of moving Hotmail's systems from Sun's Solaris operating system to Microsoft's Windows NT.
Sun has often claimed that Solaris is the world's most reliable operating system. According to sources at Sun, Microsoft has not been able to manage the switch to NT because Hotmail has been such a successful service and handles so much traffic from its 13 million email customers.
Hotmail chief technology officer Jack Smith denies this is so, but has admitted it will be more than a year before the switch is completed.
He also said: 'Redmond has recognised that we've got a business to run and keeping up the service is our first priority.'
What does that imply?
Clinton on creche course
In previous columns, I have regaled you with numerous stories about Silicon Valley's hi-tech companies and the lengths to which they will go to keep their workers happy.
Restaurants, shops and spectacularly well-equipped gyms are common perks.
Now the latest benefit designed to earn staff's undying loyalty to their employers is the day care centre for employees' kids.
The need for child care is inescapable. Hewlett Packard and IBM are among several Silicon Valley companies that have announced they will spend $1.7 million on child care facilities. They realise these are crucial in an area where long working hours, low holiday entitlement and nightmare traffic jams are facts of life.
Consultants confirm that child care and facilities for infants and children who are ill is a necessity because so many more women are continuing careers after having children. Yet only one per cent of child care centre funding comes from businesses, according to US government sources.
Awareness is growing that child care facilities are the biggest incentive to staff considering joining a company and one of the major factors that will keep them there. But US businesses have also been given another incentive - Bill Clinton has just announced tax incentives worth $500 million to persuade companies to provide day care for tots.
Wheels and deals
Even dealers who are not working in the field of technology are finding out about selling on the internet. US car dealers can pay fees of between $2,500 and $4,500 for a contract with a car sales Website, which gives them their own online section to try to attract custom.
Usually, the resellers are happy with the many additional customers they are able to reach with an online service but find their profit margins suffer. Internet customers often use a dealer's quotes to haggle with other dealers. In their search for the cheapest option, they take little notice of those dealers who want to offer customer service, repeat business and maintenance deals.
As usual, the internet is cheap for the customer and great for the volume sales operation. Value-add online is an altogether tougher sale.
Beware the space invaders
The biggest threat to Silicon Valley is not the next, dreaded 'Big One' earthquake that seismologists predict will devastate this part of California within the next 40 years.
The problem that worries people here far more is overcrowding. Housing, freeways and land use are all under pressure. In 1997, jobs in the San Francisco Bay area outnumbered dwellings by three to one, the population rose by two per cent in just 12 months and technology companies still have job vacancy lists in four figures.
Something has to change. Telecommuting is helping and a recent development in Sunnyvale is charging over the odds for its 400 apartments with wired-in internet access.
But locals feel the quality of life is falling dramatically as they find the high cost of living in the Silicon Valley area cancels out the rising salaries they have been experiencing.
Americans are used to big, detached houses, garages and privacy, but achieving these goals is not as easy as it used to be. A small cottage in Palo Alto in need of structural work is worth more than $750,000 - that is, if you can find someone willing to move out. In San Francisco itself, most apartments outside the slums are worth millions.
Every company here, particularly in the exploding business services, software and Var markets, has reason to be positive about the area's booming economy. But it can't go on for ever.
James Harding is US editor of VNU Newswire, based in San Francisco.
He can be reached at [email protected] or on 00 1 650 306 0879.