Hawaii's Science, Technology and New Media Community
#1 Cost of Doing Business in Hawaii?
Michael Tsai, Honolulu Advertiser Staff Writer, summarizes the business environment here in Hawaii as "interminable waiting periods for permits; onerous taxes; regulatory processes that seem designed to suffocate rather than promote private enterprise; layers of bureaucracy". (For the full 8/19/2009 article see: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200908...)
I hear these and other complaints often. Can you identify your most specific challenge in doing business in Hawaii and quantify its impact on your business, work, or life style?
I hear these and other complaints often. Can you identify your most specific challenge in doing business in Hawaii and quantify its impact on your business, work, or life style?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on -
Just to provide some perspective on other state's public education systems, my public high school in Iowa offered seven foreign languages including Russian, Japanese and Latin. Dozens of students in my graduating class went Ivy League. The year I graduated, Iowa's public high schools' standardized test scores were the second highest in the country. Lower and middle class families in places like Iowa and Michigan don't worry about saving $15K/year/child. The public education system puts their children toe to toe with expensive private schools.
As an aside, I briefly studied Russian and Japanese in high school but didn't pay much attention in either class. I thought, "When will I ever use Japanese and Russian?" I ended up running a development team for a Japanese company outsourcing to Russia. Doh! Pay attention in school kids!
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Permalink Reply by David Jacobs on -
Now that this thread is thoroughly hijacked :-), I'll throw out some thought provoking ideas.
Re: One aspect of why Hawaii public schools might perform more poorly than mainland counter parts
Prestigious private schools tend to be more about identifying students who will be successful rather than creating them (Malcolm Gladwell did a great piece covering research to this effect). So one aspect probably lowering Hawaii's public school averages is the effectiveness of Hawaii's private schools at pulling the best students out of the public system.
Re: Getting more great teachers
The Gates Foundation has done a lot of research on "Great" Teachers. They have discovered no metrics for identifying a great teacher other than their performance in the classroom. In other words, no amount of education or testing can tell you whether this person will be a great teacher.
This means if we want more great teachers in the system we need to eliminate pointless barriers to entry (e.g., the existing teaching credential system) thereby enlarging the potential pool. It is simply nuts that a person qualified to teach calculus at a College is not considered qualified to teach it at a high school.
Another data point to consider is that scripted teaching (where teacher is told what to say and when - i.e., little autonomy) tends to improve the performance of poor teachers. If we combine this information, we get a system that should reward a teacher that does well by giving them more and more classroom freedom and restricting classroom freedom for those who perform poorly. This helps put a floor on performance leaving the upside potential.
Re; Homeschooling
* Socialization -- Most homeschool children spend more time with adults. This means they have better adult social skills but weaker skills with their peers. Therefore dumping them into high school will be more painful, but they are likely better equipped for adult life.
* Parental limitations -- Yes, you miss out on the potential "great" teachers, but you also miss out on many bad ones. A parent having the right temperment with their child is often the more importnt factor than their knowledge limitations.
Re: College
As a final note, I will say that the college education landscape will radically change in our lifetimes. Costs have been rising at 6% year for over 30 years. We will soon approach the point where the cost of education is higher than the expected lifetime benefit in earnings. Clearly the existing growth in costs cannot continue. Like healthcare, I have no idea what the new system will look like, but you can bet that the system will be radically different 30 years from now. If you can guess what the new system will look like, there will be opportunities there.
All pau.
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Permalink Reply by Wayne Karo on -
Peter and Ken,
As David noted, you've hijacked this thread. Your points on the costs of education to doing business in Hawaii is duly noted. You ignored my mild mannered summary--a failed attempt to get us back on track. Since we're friends and I know you are savvy tech guys, could you please start up another thread to continue your debate. As penance, I'd ask that you'd revive my original discussion by putting forth more a couple more ideas each on how to quantify the costs of doing business in Hawaii.
Thank you for your kokua.
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Permalink Reply by Peter Kay on
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Sorry Wayne, the education issue unfortunately is huge with tech in Hawaii and in my own twisted view of the world I see it as the core issue that hurts our industry.
Quantification of cost impact for me is difficult. It's not a permitting or tax issue. It's a can't-get-good-people-to-relocate-here issue.
The only quantified cost one might arrive at is the tuition cost paid by all those in high tech to send their kids to a private school. One might argue that companies wishing to retain their top people have to compensate them for this additional cost via higher wages that, had we a fantastic public ed system in place, would not be necessary.
Hope this helps and apologies for taking this topic to a place where you probably didn't want.
Wayne Karo said:Peter and Ken,
As David noted, you've hijacked this thread. Your points on the costs of education to doing business in Hawaii is duly noted. You ignored my mild mannered summary--a failed attempt to get us back on track. Since we're friends and I know you are savvy tech guys, could you please start up another thread to continue your debate. As penance, I'd ask that you'd revive my original discussion by putting forth more a couple more ideas each on how to quantify the costs of doing business in Hawaii.
Thank you for your kokua.
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Permalink Reply by Wayne Karo on
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Peter,
Thank you for getting the discussion back on track. We were in employment discussions with one person recently for which the school issue was a major decision factor. Fortunately we have been able to hire local talent and bring top world class talent to Hawaii, but in general they happened not to have school age children to date.
Startups may place extra demands on their workforce, i.e. long hours and lower cash salaries. It would be interesting to know if high tech startups in Silicon Valley or Boston have a larger amount of employees with more than one school age child.
Wayne
Peter Kay said:
Quantification of cost impact for me is difficult. It's not a permitting or tax issue. It's a can't-get-good-people-to-relocate-here issue.
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I'd be especially interested in knowing how that splits at the management team level. You've typically got 30-50yr olds at that level and that's definitely child-rearing age. On one hand I'd say Hawaii is one of the best places on earth to raise your kids, but on the other hand, it comes at a very high price.
Wayne Karo said:Peter,
Thank you for getting the discussion back on track. We were in employment discussions with one person recently for which the school issue was a major decision factor. Fortunately we have been able to hire local talent and bring top world class talent to Hawaii, but in general they happened not to have school age children to date.
Startups may place extra demands on their workforce, i.e. long hours and lower cash salaries. It would be interesting to know if high tech startups in Silicon Valley or Boston have a larger amount of employees with more than one school age child.
Wayne
Peter Kay said:
Quantification of cost impact for me is difficult. It's not a permitting or tax issue. It's a can't-get-good-people-to-relocate-here issue.
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Permalink Reply by Ken Berkun on -
Wayne, I agree the thread's been hijacked, I noted early on that it was a rat hole and I stopped commenting yesterday, no more from me!
Hey Peter - start a new discussion!
Ken
Wayne Karo said:Peter and Ken,
As David noted, you've hijacked this thread. Your points on the costs of education to doing business in Hawaii is duly noted. You ignored my mild mannered summary--a failed attempt to get us back on track. Since we're friends and I know you are savvy tech guys, could you please start up another thread to continue your debate. As penance, I'd ask that you'd revive my original discussion by putting forth more a couple more ideas each on how to quantify the costs of doing business in Hawaii.
Thank you for your kokua.
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Permalink Reply by Truman Leung on -
I met a very nice Indian man who is a QA manager for an Indian IT outsourcing company who says they have 200 employees stationed here in Honolulu working for (1) Hawaiian Airlines, (2) Hawaiian Telecom and (3) Hawaiian Electric.
The QA manager told me that even though he is paid 3 to 4 times as much as he would be paid when living in India, he is not able to save much money because of the higher cost of living here to since his wife and children are also here with him.
I wonder at what price point Hawaii IT consultancies would have to be at in order to compete with an Indian company. Are Indian companies required by State law to provide their full-time employees living here with health insurance? I'm sure the children attend our public schools for free. Perhaps the State of Hawaii should provide a tax credit to companies that hire local rather than outsource abroad so that the money that we otherwise spend on educating children of foreign workers could be instead to incentivize them to keep Hawaii money local.
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