Om Malik: Silicon Valley's Talent Crunch

I think another factor Om didn't mention, which is also at play, is that an increasing number of talented engineers and designers are striking off on their own and building their own startups. It's not so much they're being poached by other companies as they are poaching themselves. There's so much cheap infrastructure, frameworks and open source packages today that I think the balance of power in software startups is shifting more towards talent inputs, and away from mere cash inputs.

Why is no one mentioning the somewhat obvious aspect that people might not want to live in CA?<p>At some point, all of the available in state talent is going to be employed. Now you have to look outside. Much of your senior talent are not going to be able to up and move. There's a big difference between working insane startup worloads with a company in your home town vice doing the same AND doing it a new city after having moved your family across the country.

Personally, I am at a crossroads. I have suitable spare time to start pursuing ideas I think will provide the basis for a good idea or even work on the side with an interesting startup. I'm into boring backend things like pipes, data, security and infrastructure (software not hardware). However, owning a house and living in the South Bay puts geographic limits on where I am willing to engage with companies on a daily basis.<p>In addition to people starting their own thing, I've also noticed that a number of people are trying to focus a bit more on the work / life balance. Trying to get out more and enjoy nature/work out/etc. instead of working 20 hours a day. And, in some ways, this is impacting their decisions between startups and large companies.

&#62; More startups competing for fewer talent resources will mean that the cost of doing business is going to go up, which in this era of on-demand infrastructure from the likes of Amazon Web Services means SALARIES, which are essentially the single biggest component of any startups’s spending.<p>Reading that sentence alone, and then thinking about how much big corporate CEO's are paid, and banksters and Wall Street types, hedge fund managers, etc. and as a software engineer I tell ya my heart just bleeds for them. What a horrible tragedy, having salaries for talent go up. So irrational! :) Heck, at least the engineers and designers are actually building something, and adding to society, which is more than many of those other types can say.

Maybe now tech companies will wake up and start to re-think their ageist hiring policies.

There is a direct relationship between uncertainty about the economy and the problem of finding/retaining talent for startups and small businesses.<p>The current U.S. government's "tax the rich" attitude can't be helping small business, either. It just adds to the uncertainty.<p>Some have been running for cover, but some of us are running against the crowd.