The technology industry is clearly prospering, but has it entered a period of irrational exuberance? There are good reasons to worry that it has and that the bursting of this bubble could be painful, to investors in and employees of tech firms as well as to the broader economy.
By several measures — stock prices, multibillion-dollar acquisitions, the compensation of employees, the money being spent by start-ups that have little revenue or profits — the technology industry is in a period that is starting to feel like the late 1990s. Even some industry elders who lived through the previous boom and bust, including the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Bill Gurley, are warning that Silicon Valley might be overheating.
