The Fight For Top Talent

The Fight For Top Talent



This article was originally in the Wall Street Journal and it is a sure indication that the technology sector is once again leading the way in regards to hiring. For companies willing to settle for “pretty good”, they have many to choose from. For those looking for the best, it will always be a challenge.  Names have been changed **


The unemployment rate in Silicon Valley may be higher than the 9% national average, but that’s not making it any easier for some young technology start-ups looking to hire engineers.
Jim Jones, the co-founder and chief executive of San Francisco software start-up Cloud2.0 Inc., calls the competition for top talent “a war.” His company, which this year raised $10 million in Series A funding and  plans to spend 80% of its new capital on salaries, mostly for engineers.
“I go home and watch the news and the talk about the economic condition of this country, and it’s a totally different world when you’re trying to recruit top people in tech,” he says. “Basically, we have zero unemployment.”
There are several reasons why Cloud2.0 hiring job is difficult. Salaries in the Bay Area are high  $75,000 for an engineer just out of school, up to $150,000 for someone with the right experience, while the median salaries for software engineers nationally can range from $51,000 for entry level to $101,000 for an experienced, senior-level programmer, according to Salary.com Inc.
Top engineers in the Bay Area have a lot of choices. Google boosted salaries for its rank and file last month in order to keep its top talent away from Facebook and other start-ups, and tech companies have been offering more equity to top engineers.
But even though the salaries have to be market-rate at Cloud2.0 Inc.  that won’t be the deciding factor for most candidates. They want their work to be important enough that it makes a difference at the company, and they want to have fun.  They also find that having engineers working together in a group makes them much more productive.