Porch.com Raises $65M Series B Round as It Prepares to Take Its Service Nationwide

TechCrunch | Frederic Lardinois| Jan. 20

http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/20/porch-com-raises-65m-series-b-round-as-it-prepares-to-take-its-service-nationwide/

“Porch.com, the Seattle-based startup that uses a data-driven approach to help homeowners find local professionals for all of their home improvement and repair needs, today announced that it has raised a $65 million Series B round… Porch plans to use these new funds to fuel its growth. While it started out as a very data-driven service for finding out what kind of home improvement projects your neighbors were doing in your neighborhood — and what professionals they hired for them — the company has lately expanded into a number of new services on a city-by-city basis… Porch, which has been on somewhat of a hiring spree lately and now has over 300 employees, also plans to use its new funds to scale its infrastructure and launch a number of new products in 2015.”

Current local job listings for Porch

 

Tech Pros Ride Hot Hiring Streak into New Year

InfoWorld | Paul Krill | Jan. 20

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2872701/it-jobs/hiring-streak-stays-hot-for-tech-pros.html

“Tech professionals continue to have rosy prospects in the job market. Unemployment in the U.S. technology sector for late-2014 reached the lowest level recorded since 2008, jobs site Dice.com is reporting this week. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dice.com noted the average unemployment rate of 2.5 percent for technology professionals was slightly less than the third quarter’s 2.7 percent rate. For the entire year, the average rate of 2.7 percent was a “significant decline” from the 3.6 percent average rate in 2013… jobless rates dropped for a long list of technology professionals last year. Dice.com’s list includes Web developers, computer systems analysts, computer support professionals programmers, network and systems integrators, software developers, computer and information systems managers, data administrators and network architects. “It proved to be a particularly good year for programmers, computer and information systems managers, and computer support specialists, whose unemployment rates were nearly cut in half from 2013,” Dice.com said.”

 

Elon Musk Touts Launch of ‘SpaceX Seattle’

The Seattle Times | Dominic Gates | Jan. 19

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2025480750_spacexmuskxml.html

“Elon Musk visited Seattle Friday but made clear he has higher aspirations when he told the crowd at a glitzy private event, ‘One day I will visit Mars.’..Musk outlined a new space venture centered in Washington state that he hopes will bankroll that ambition. Inside the Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center Friday evening, Musk proclaimed ‘the launch of SpaceX Seattle’ to a crowd of about 400 invited guests who reacted with rousing applause. The majority of those present were hand-picked engineers identified by SpaceX recruiters as potential hires…Musk outlined an audacious plan to build a constellation of some 4,000 geosynchronous satellites, a network in space that could deliver high-speed Internet access anywhere on Earth…Alex Pietsch, director of Gov. Jay Inslee’s aerospace office, said one University of Washington graduate student at the event told him, ‘I don’t want to move to L.A. or Florida or Texas. Having this here is really cool’…Earlier this week, Musk told Bloomberg News he will ultimately employ ‘several hundred people, maybe a thousand people’ in Washington state. Friday night, he spoke of ‘slow but steady and significant growth’ in employment here and cautioned the engineers to be patient. Musk asked them to try again if they don’t hear back from SpaceX soon. ‘It’s hard to hire 500 people all at once,’ he said.”

Current local job listings for SpaceX

 

Everett-built Carbon Fiber Wings Key to Boeing’s Future

The Herald Business Journal | Debra Vaughn | Jan. 19

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20150119/BIZ/150119997

“Contractors are creating a new 1.3 million-square-foot factory where Boeing workers will eventually fabricate airplane wings for a new family of twin-aisle airplanes called the 777X… The Composite Wing Center secures a future for Boeing in Everett and all that comes with it: good-paying jobs, tax revenue and the pump of steady paychecks into the local economy…Boeing declined to say exactly how many jobs the new 777X will create but did say that it would increase employment on the 777 group by 10 percent. Boeing’s move toward more advanced manufacturing techniques sets the stage for other companies to cluster here. For instance, KUKA Aerospace, a division of the largest robotics companies in the world, just opened a facility near Boeing and is on tap to create the automated system that will build the fuselage of the 777X… Statewide, the composites industry offers the potential for tens of thousands of skilled labor jobs, according to the state Department of Commerce. State employers engage in composites last year employed more than 10,000 workers — that’s up from nearly 8,400 in 2011. That excludes jobs at Boeing.”

Current local job listings for Boeing

 

The White House’s Plan to Fix Tech’s Diversity Problem and Cybersecurity at the Same Time

ThinkProgress | Lauren C. Williams | Jan. 15

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/01/15/3612197/hbcu-cybersecurity-initiative/

“In the wake of recent high-profile cybersecurity attacks, the Obama Administration awarded $25 million to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) Thursday to expand their cybersecurity degree programs…The new initiative, titled the Cybersecurity Workforce Pipeline Consortium…aims to give black students the resources needed to complete their studies and successfully enter the cybersecurity workforce by partnering with the Department of Energy’s labs, providing professional mentoring, teaching and course development, and recruiting students into the department…Racial diversity in tech has been a steady struggle…Much of that disparity comes from the lack of educational offerings, and because big tech companies routinely pluck talent from the same limited pool of elite schools that have little to no racial diversity…Meanwhile, the demand for cybersecurity workers is growing at record pace. Nearly 43 million cyber attacks were detected in 2014, 48 percent more than the year before. Those breaches cost the U.S. economy almost $500 billion a year for companies to recoup funds and rebuild their network security…The cybersecurity field is booming as a result, and is projected to grow even more in the coming decade — about 12 times faster than the overall U.S. job market.”

 

Facebook to Double Footprint of Seattle Engineering Office

Puget Sound Business Journal | Rachel Lerman | Jan. 15

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/01/facebook-to-double-footprint-of-seattle.html

“Facebook is doubling the amount of space it occupies in its downtown Seattle engineering office, the company confirmed Thursday. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook has moved into a fourth floor in its building near Howell Street and Interstate 5 and will be taking over two more floors next month. The company employs about 400 people in its Seattle office, so the expansion could give it enough room for 800 employees…Facebook Seattle lead Paul Carduner told The Seattle Times that the company is staying in its current building for now, but will likely move to a different building in Seattle soon…The company currently has 58 open positions. Facebook hasn’t shared exactly how many people the company plans to hire in Seattle.”

Latest local job postings for Facebook

 

Looking for a Tech Job? There are Better Places than California

CNET | Steven Musil | Jan. 14

http://www.cnet.com/news/looking-for-a-tech-job-dont-go-to-california/

“If you are looking for a job in tech, you likely have a better chance in Texas than you do in Silicon Valley. That’s the finding of a WalletHub, a financial information website that ranked 100 US metropolitan areas for the best and worst areas to find a job in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM). Demand for trained employees in these fields is high, with a projected growth rate 1.7 times faster than non-STEM jobs in the period 2008 to 2018, according to WalletHub…Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Boston didn’t even crack the top five, which was rounded out by Raleigh, N.C., Denver, and Omaha, Neb. Of the areas traditionally thought of as tech hubs, Seattle came in the highest at No. 6, Boston was a distant 35, and San Francisco snuck in to the list of top 40 areas at 38, while neighbor San Jose, Calif., ranked 49th. While Silicon Valley may not present the best STEM job opportunity, you were more likely to be surrounded by STEM employees in San Jose — the heart of Silicon Valley — than anywhere else in the nation. Other cities with the highest percentage of STEM employees included Washington, DC, and Seattle.”