Attracting Technology Talent > Amplifier Ventures

Monday, October 01, 2007

Attracting Technology Talent
By Brian Murrow @ 10:30 PM :: 1161 Views :: 2 Comments :: Brian Murrow Blog, Featured Blog, Start Up World, DC Tech Corridor

As an addendum to a blog I wrote last year, The Fight for Top Performers, I thought that the article from this past Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post, Why AOL Matters, underscores some of the issues facing the Washington DC / Virginia area job market. It turns out that Virginia has the highest concentration of technology sector jobs compared with that of any other state. Nonetheless, it seems harder and harder to higher high-quality technology talent. That’s because the federal government employs most of these high-tech workers, which results in these tech sector jobs paying 99 percent more than the average private sector job.

And as a local entrepreneur starting a technology business in the WashingtonDC / Northern Virginia area, I tend to agree with the Washington Post’s conclusion that these Federal technology jobs are successfully crowding out opportunities for non-government technology resources. With so many low-risk, high-paying opportunities coming out of the Federal technology sector, it often seems that the entrepreneurial spirit of local technology talent has sold out to the highest bidder.

It’s a shame that so much local technology talent has taken the route of foregoing commercial innovation for this lower risk route. As someone who has spent over ten years providing enterprise-level technology to large corporate and federal clients, I know first hand that that is a hard decision to make. I can attest first hand that, although the entrepreneurial route is risky and at times stressful, applying technology experience to building a business from scratch it a very rewarding experience that can pay off.

My point is that I highly encourage other local technology professionals to bet on themselves and take a shot at either starting a local technology business or to join a young entrepreneurial environment.

It would be great to hear experiences from people who have moved from a more established corporate or federal technology environment into a more entrepreneurial environment and some of your lessons learned in this transition. Please feel free to drop me a comment below or send me an email.

Comments

By Jason Wishard @ Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:50 AM

I began my career in the late 90's while finishing college. I worked for a small start up in the MSP business, but soon found out that there was lack of drive from my superiors to really foster entrepreneurial ideas and grow a decently funded business.

Move forward a couple of years later (a Dotcom bust and several months working at Wal-Mart to pay the bills) and I found myself “selling out” to work in the Fed sector. Well, I wasn’t really selling out, I just didn’t like being paid $8 an hour for stocking milk when I was accustomed to much more pay for doing cooler stuff. Not that stocking milk isn’t cool at times, but come on, nothing beats a technology job.

I found myself immersed in a group of people that, little did I know, would propel my career forward. I came to the table with skills in visual design and light, light skills on the HTML/CSS front. My supervisor graciously taught me the knowledge of the semantic web and all things Information Architecture and Interaction Design related. As time past, I found myself diving more into new ideas and better ways of handling information due to my understanding of how things work based on data relationships.

Move forward another two years, and I decided to move on to a new position at Customs so I could tech people and help the cause of Web Standards and better architecture for data in the Fed. Three months later, I found myself being let go because of my evangelizing. I guess Customs doesn’t like new ideas.

My last job in a strong of three Fed jobs was at DOE, where I had the privilege of helping to implement a fully semantic web site with great SEO and the ability to grow too much, much more. Of course, do to politics and budget cuts, I dodged out of there to avoid being caught up in the cuts.

My new and final home, to date, is with a growing web services company in Reston, VA. After almost 8 years, I have finally found my home. I can wear jeans to work, we have a ping pong table and I get to suggest ideas for growth and new products.

I will say that taking a Fed job again is something I would only do if the current tech market falls to its knees. Of course, I can’t say that those Fed jobs were all bad either. I learned much from working those few agencies, like what not to do and in some cases, what to do. Overall, it fueled my knowledge and gave me a better perception of the tech arena and also sparked my creative nature to create better products for the public at large.

By Jim Basara @ Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:24 AM

I also started my career in Federal, working for 10 years at various big integrators before giving in to my entrepreneurial urges.

I leverage my memory on how I felt at that time when I interview job candidates for my company. The great thing about the "problem" you mention is that the federal market takes those people who are salary focused off the market. I'm sure we've all had bad hiring experiences where an employee THOUGHT they wanted to be an entreprenuer until that time when the company is out looking for financing and times get a little tough. It is during these times when people really find out whether or not they are entreprenuers. Some people in this area are enamoured with startups because the envision continuing to earn a great salary AND get the possibility of a big payout, AND get to wear jeans and have a pool table. They never think of the possible turmoil.

But, with so many federal opportunities out there, I find that the people who are ignoring those opportunities in favor of working for commercial startups really do understand what that means and the crave the excitement, team atmosphere, culture, and potential upside.

In short, the fed job market does a great service of "thinning the heard", allowing us to identify true entreprenuers among the pack.

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