Texas Technology Industry Doing OK; ATI Loses Another Director

Sometimes bad news doesn't seem so bad when you look at it in context. Although Texas lost 38,000 technology-related jobs in the fourth quarter of 2008, that decline was less than half of the national numbers.

Trade association TechAmerica reported a 0.6 percent decline in Texas during the last three months of 2008. The rate of job loss in the nation's private sector was 1.3 percent during that same period.

The negative swing comes just one year after Texas' technology job growth was the largest in the United States. Texas has more high-tech workers than any state other than California.

In other technology news, the Austin Technology Incubator's clean energy division lost its second director in less than a year. Reed Benet, who began working at ATI in December, said he is stepping down to launch his own ventures.

Benet came to the clean energy division after Joel Serface left last May to join California venture capital firm Perkins Caufield & Byers.