American Entrepreneur

CHAPTER 14

Americans and the Global Market

A pall hung over once-hot technology regions. Silicon Valley nightclubs hosted employment parties where recently laid-off engineers and executives showed up with their resumes to “speed date” potential employers. “The ‘pink slips’ are falling like confetti,” observed one reporter, as 10,000 Silicon Valley workers lost their jobs in December 2000 alone.¹ While the region hardly experienced the ghost town fate that befell some of the cattle towns of the 1800s, Silicon Valley nevertheless saw many of its brightest star companies lose their luster. Lucent, Cisco, Sun, Compaq (now Hewlett-Packard), and others ...