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Is the tech skills crisis just a myth?

but if your goal is to justify offshoring work wouldn't you expect upper management to push "we have a worker shortage"? When you look at it that way you will find reality at odds with what is coming out of those HR director's mouths. Just like you lay out in your article...

I worked as a contractor for a large Investment firm in new England. I often heard lamenting about there not being enough talent. I also heard from my recruiter that the real need was for foreign resources who were more willing to work longer hours for less or equal pay. That is, the dollars per hour were less than what could be expected from an American worker.
I suspect companies in America are hiring Americans and then letting them go claiming their skills are insufficient. This would provide evidence to the government that more visas are needed to fill the apparent, but fabricated, skills gap.
I, fortunately, have only been out of work for very short periods of time because there is a demand for my skills. I, however, have not seen any evidence of a shortage of IT skills. Quite the contrary, employers feel free to hire and fire without concern for loss of talent.

>Its often claimed we are suffering an IT skills crisis of epic proportions

Wrong. It is always claimed we are suffering an IT skills crisis of epic proportions. I've been in this profession for more than 25 years, and in all this time, the said claiming never stopped. Not for a moment, regardless of economic situation.

> So what is fueling these claims of a skills crisis? According to the LSEs Liebenau, one reason is many reports about IT skills demand are based on interviews with the likes of HR directors, who have a clear incentive to report that they need higher skilled people, in order that they have a larger talent pool to choose from.

Exactly. There are other reasons as well. Industry is interested in larger talent pool, because it drives the wages down. Universities are interested in larger number of students, for obvious reasons. Management, when pressured by stockholders over lower profits, tends to shift the blame to the lack of proper (ha!) talent. Such blame shifting is fairly reliable early indicator of IT companies being squeezed by coming recession. So: If you go to news.google.com, search for "it talent shortage", "it skill shortage", or something similar, and if you notice an increase in number of different articles, it's time to consider selling or shorting the tech stocks.

Employers just don't want to put any training into an employee. Even though often every job requires some training since we all use technology differently.

It's not a shortage of people in IT - it's a shortage of people who really know what they are doing. I interview all the time and find there to a glut of mid-level people. But people who aren't just power administrators - people with true knowledge - a very hard to find. One of my vendors (let's just IBM/EMC/HP to not be specific but get the idea) has concurred from information among his clients. There is a shortage of really good IT people, but there are plenty of people who are in the IT field. And I think this has kept salaries down as companies are worried that they most often get people who are not that good - so they don't offer up the pay. The economy overall doesn't help either as employers feel like they can just turn around and get someone else given the state of unemployment - but again, it's hard to turn around and get a really knowledgeable person.

When they do find somebody who really knows what he's doing, they pile more and more work on him, but don't raise his pay, until they chase him away. He then puts the word out about how XYZ Corp abuses their IT people.

And they start wondering why they can't get IT people who really know what they're doing...

As that...

Interesting comment from WSSCMAH, but I think it might be related to the known rates of pay offshore compared to the known domestic rates. The shortage may be related in this way- there aren't enough good domestic IT people that align with the more desirable offshore rates...

They do not want highly experienced and successful software/firmware engineers because they would have to pay more for the talent and since most managers do not understand the technology ( that is my experience) they want someone recently out of college because then their butt is covered. I had managers tell me that I did not understand the technology that I was involved in inventing, first production implementation, evolution, and support of technologies because my schooling was too long ago.

Even if it were true that there is a worker shortage, we the human beings populating this planet have always found ways to improve efficiency or effectiveness to the extent that "shortages" seem to pass or be adapted out of existence. The base case for off shoring work though was not employee shortages, but cost savings, and as has been suggested, that is most likely the driver here. Way back in 1999 I predicted to co-workers that eventually pay in the world market for "skilled IT workers" will rise to a level (and the US rate will fall) where the cost savings (with the included loss of convenience factors - 2 AM to 10 AM work days) would go away, leaving local labor as the most cost effective solution. Are we there and that represents a "shortage?"

Employers want IT people with Journeyman level skills at Entry Level wages.
IT people with Entry level skills still expect Journeyman wages.
Corporate Boards and investors want high profits and damn the workers.
And nobody's willing to give up anything.

I have two college degrees in IT, but find it hard to land a real job because I just do not have the necessary experience with some tools. I want to learn about them, but you can only do so much in a classroom environment.
I do not like to exaggerate on my current IT skills. If I do not have much experience with something, I make it known. I do want to understand how to do the stuff, but a lot of the time I just do not have access or anyone who is willing to show me the ropes.
Businesses today want the skills NOW. If you do not have them, you're out of luck. They do not want to waste time and money having to do any kind of training. You are basically expected to know everything at 8am on Monday of your first day of work like you have been there for 10 years.

No, there are plenty of skilled people looking for employment, but there is a significant shortage of the people with the required knowledge to hire them and there is going to be an outcry when the companies finally realize that their HR departments are looking only at the salary and not the skills needed. Experienced people with yers of the proper skill are being bypassed for cheaper people with six months of that skill. We are haeded for a skillset crash.

- managerial/owner incompetence

- the BYOD mentality in conjunction to the highly related U.I.O.I.T.B.P. (user ideas overrule IT best practices)

1) As in the article, there are a TON of IT workers in the unemployment 'lines'.

2) Many Certification exams don't cover a lot of what happens in actual work environs

3) Most college-level schooling (IMO) doesn't train anyone for work environs

4) Companies do not want to take any responsibility for their IT employees. They want 'plug and play' employees for IT (and other fields) and, being PEOPLE, things just do not work that way. Few companies, if any, do everything the exact same way. Ask any 10 companies IT departments how they do XYZ, and you'll get 15 different answers. If you want a guru, PAY for one... OR, TRAIN ONE yourself. (this is to the managers.) Corps no longer truly train their employees, at least not like they used to.

Once was a time you started with a company/corporation, and they made sure they kept you. That is no longer the case. The other bit to the 'lack' of IT 'workers', is that some of these companies HAVE gone overseas for some type of help... And it backfired. I assure you I am NOT the only person who knows more about the device they call in for support on, than the first level OR TWO of the tech support. And to boot it's often hard, if not impossible to understand them. Of course, due to a particularly stupid JUDGE... A company I know is ~no longer allowed to ask technical questions~ of any call-center/tech-support new-hires. And then wonder why their customers are angry.

When a position opens but demands the wearing of multiple hats, such as help desk administrator, DBA, developer, and oh, yeah, CCNA with 14+ years networking... guess what? That person doesn't exist. And then HR/recruiters whine that they can't find qualified candidates. DUH!

The last time I was in the job market, employers in one sector of the economy would not hire a person who had done the same job, but in a different sector. So a person who has the skill in one sector, such as education, would not be even considered to do the same job in a health care setting. Then the health care sector claims lack of skills. The problem was not in the applicants, but in the HR people and in the employer who would not allow experience to transfer between sectors.

I think there are at least a few things at work here.

1) Employers are not willing to pay in the first place. In my 25 years in IT, there has been a constant push by employers to depress salaries using a number of tactics. This false scarcity is used to encourage more people to train independently and enlarge the pool (and justify off-shoring as someone else stated).

2) Employers have not yet figured out that they should be hiring on talent, not skill. Hire a talented person and pay them well and they will take care of you and learn any skill needed.

3) Without employers willing to do hire by talent (#2), it is very difficult for individuals to independently train to current needs. There is no real incentive to invest a large amount of personal time and money in self-training when the market will have moved by the time you are trained.

#2 would indeed be the solution to "talent crisis", "skill crisis", whatever you want to call it, BUT-- prerequisite for it is the long term relationship and mutual trust between employer and employee. That trust is now gone. It was broken so long ago, that it no longer matters who broke it, why, and how. It's gone, and it's not coming back. We'll just have to live without it- if we can.

The needs of clients of the IT industry probably remain pretty constant: collect, enter, analyze, report. However, demand for IT services is largely driven like a treadmill of resource diversion toward ever increasing IT potential to make those basics look snazzy. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that metrics for getting actual work done are rarely presented. The industry feeds itself by delivering new demands as much as- or dare we consider- more often than it delivers (let alone supports) end-user productivity. The IT ecosystem drives self-supporting purchasing of upgrades to hardware, software, security and employee skills- often infuriatingly divorced from the ability of people to actually get meaningful use from their systems.

The real big bang in IT has been in management, which does remain well-paid overall even without demonstrable training or certifications. Improving computing resources and implementations- while often miraculous- are taken to be driven by Moore's law, and completely taken for granted as low-skilled platform requirements- met solely through training. The singular constant of change- in coding, protocols, technology- allows management to claim required skills are reflected entirely by (certified, current) training, which is perpetually, and conveniently, falling out of date. Hence, relatively low salaries and completely inappropriate dependence on certifications are seen as appropriate for obtaining the basic 'monkey-motions' required by more important BIG PLANS.

Conveniently, the inflated 'need' for certified trainings have been satisfied by divisions of the same industry that demands them. Staff development, versatility, insight and so on all seem to be viewed as impedimentary wastes of the energy needed to service the constant churn of new initiatives. What incentive could there be NOT to continually re-select freshly trained, newly certified and up-to-date new applicants at entry level salaries?

A supposedly small slice of my duties is to help a large group deal with the endless march of interrupting IT 'improvements'- that keep systems updating and re-booting all week every week. Although we are persistently blessed with Orwellian memos and indecipherable messages about making work safer and more productive, there is a real feeling that IT has no clue or concern for end-user productivity. The 'lack of skills' end-users perceive in both IT management and support focuses on that insensitivity to, or perhaps outright disregard for why people are expected to USE their computers.

I was a kid when a basketball with antennae was sent into orbit and transmitted tremendously useful information: beep...beep...beep.... All of a sudden, the USA was lacking in physicists, engineers, teachers, etc. Many of us were steered into these professions (OK, I liked it, no regrets) and were never employed in them. Sound familiar? Something new under the sun?

Not to sound paranoid, but, yes, the whole thing was a scam. They took what they considered la-creme d la creme and the rest of us ended up in the ash can.

Dot com crisis of a few years back? Hi paid balloon burst and all-of-a-sudden, experienced computer pros over 40 were no longer needed or welcome. Another unfortunate coincidence? You bet.

This is simple demand versus supply.
More people with the requisite skills (don't get me started on skills versus tools), the less they cost.
Add in the paper qualified, the appaling mismatch between theory and application in academia, the certification merry-go-round, the constant dumbing down of the required disciplines, the ignorance of hirers and the desire for short term maximisation of sahreholder value and you get where we are now.
The best people already have a job, and are expensive (relatively)
The least experienced can't get a job, becasue they haven't got experience
Most of those with choice of a career path , quite rightly are not going anywhere near IT.

So now we end up with that other simple truism.
You get what you pay for.
Suck it up business heads, this is what you wanted.

I wholeheatedly agree with this item.
I have noticed grads with first class honours in perhaps their second or third job being paid less than the average council administrators. Some of these kids are very tallanted and are worked very hard.
I also regularly see employees in life science companies being paid astronomical salaries in comparison to their counterparts (in terms of skills and responsibilities). There is no skills crisis in IT - in fact there is a glut of very highly qualified, talanted people working for a pittance.
The myth stems from the following. Companies bemoan the fact that they cannot find 'exact, pre-trained, pre-inducted, drones that fit into exactly the precise job specifications that they come up with. This is a reflection of a fundamental lazziness and unwilling to work with raw talent on the part of companies and it is re-interpruted (as many things are) by the civil service as a 'Crisis' demanding more public sector budget. More training grants, more courses, more public sector spending on educating people for jobs that do not exist. Consequence - wages are bid down, talanted young people working for very little - dragging the rest of the sector down. Why don't they train more people to sell pills and boxes to the NHS instead - there certainly seems to be a skills crisis in that sector.

The unemployment in tech, and 'lower' than normal salaries is due to companies not hiring directly on their own, independent of the price gouging and manipulation by recruitment firms. None of these placement shops use anything close to ethical practices; in fact, most of colleagues consider them crooks. They foul up every deal they get involved with, taking %55 of the tech worker's wages, and refusing to let the client company hire them full-time for a minimum of 4 months, most of the time much longer. The net effect is that the worker quits or is fired, not willing to work under such "unjust" conditions. By having companies using "placement" firms instead of hiring them direct, the United States of America has become like 3rd rate countries where crime, corruption, poverty and injustice are the rule of the land. Let companies simply place their own ads on places like CareerBuilder.com, instead of telling some lying, thieving middle-man to place the ad for them.

tl;dr - Short version: A skills shortfall **IS** a skills crisis because if nobody has the skills required to do the job or compete for a different job, the job cannot be done AT ANY PRICE.

Long version:
I was laid off from a job because I was one of the most expensive people doing the job (never mind that I was ALSO one of the most productive). PLUS they were outsourcing a couple dozen positions at my level to India (cheaper workers, less productive).

I was hired at a different company and at a higher rate of pay. BUT... We have three people on my team all at about 90% utilization. 100% utilization is management's goal, BUT... we are supposed to continue our education to improve our usefullness to the company (meaning 2 people have to add 1/2 of another person's work to their own load which means working more hours for the same pay), BUT... The company has allocated $850 per person (company wide)for continuing education while classes for our continuing education (IT) start at $1300 per course, AND... The company KNOWS that not everyone will take a class this year, yet it is impossible to take a $1300 class before 4th quarter, AND... The company freezes all the training budgets in October.

If I cannot get the training required to improve my own job performance or get the training to compete for my manager's job when he/she moves on, I **AM** the skills shortfall.

I would have to agree with the fabricated "Labor Shortage" statements. I recently went to a major job fair at the University and found that there were several companies looking for interns and entry level people for about $11-$18 per hour, but when I pressed further I found that most of the employers were not looking for that many people to fill those positions. As a person who has had to call the dredded "HELP DESK" I have dealt 1st hand with the major language barrier and witnessed the lack of common sence the tech managers have regarding the customer service aspect of business. I don't understand how these managers keep their jobs considering that customers have by in large fled companies who's customer service is farmed out to a country that has a very tepid grasp of the english language. Eventually people not only get fed up but they also share their experiance with their friends warning them off. This is a very good example of you get what you pay for, and I have on many occassions favored great customer service over great price because, "YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR" plain and simple. So when I read (on a daily basis) of yet another technology business fails and is being liquidated, I just sit back and laugh out loud with a hint of sadness at the victim business owner who was cheated over by a smooth talking "tech manager" who was 80% con man, 10% sales man, 5% technology knowledgeable, and 5% ready for the next job they knew they would have to be looking for as they were experianced in failure and ready for the eventual outcome without the concern for the co-workers who probably needed the paycheck.

That companies don't want to invest in employees that they already have. If we had illegal aliens coming across the border that had these skills, we wouldn't hear complaints. This is an effort to get the government to raise H1B and other visa levels to satisfy their need for cheaper and more compliant labor. If companies would invest in what we have available here and also in students in college, may be the whining would stop as well. The thing is, it's a dollar chasing a dime. They don't want to spend the money on investment, just have ready made labor. While it is a global economy, this shows poor appreciation and respect for where these leaders live. I imagine they'd sell grandma if it helped the bottom line.

That's the biggest thing. But there's a bigger, systemic psychological thing too.

I didn't understand how our culture of instant gratification and disposability led to unrealistic expectations until I actually started and ran a full time IT business.

You can look at it like this.....people don't value intellectual property. When I say "people" just look at it to mean the general public...not ALL people. When I say value, I mean they want it enough to pay for it....not that they don't want it for free. People don't value service. Oh, I know in some marketing circles it's popular to say they do, but for the most part that type of person is the exception. People don't value functional. They see functional as an entitlement. People value PHYSICAL things. Things that look cool. Things that are heavy, so they must be valuable.

People want things now. They don't want to invest. They don't want wait. They don't care about the technical details, or you creative solutions. Just give me what I want now.

Business is just an extension of the "people" concept. Managers have learned to churn and burn as a survival technique. Get short term results, and get out before it's too late.

While we probably all agree with this, the question is what is the right move for the IT pro.

Well....it's unavoidable some of us will have to get out. I don't see there ever being a demand like there was pre 2k. Everybody needs to look hard at transferable skills, and how to get more of them. It might be the best thing that could happen to them if they simply took a paycut and did something else. I most definitely am telling geeky teens to avoid the industry. I doubt many are listening, but I do my best as a fellow who honestly cares about their ability to earn a living in the future.

...who want to work long hours for crap pay.

Have you seen the job description for many IT positions? They look like an inventory list of whatever technology the company is using. They don't understand that there's a billion different permutations of technology and there is NO IT professional out there who is a perfect fit. Even the guy that left the company wasn't always the perfect fit--he became it. Any employer who gives you the "laundry list" of job descriptions probably don't have enough people.

I'm seeing lots of good comments. Here's my summary:

1. No evidence of a talent, skill, knowledge "shortage" or "shortfall" has ever been presented. We've only seen self-serving execs (in business and academia), and immigration lawyers, and foreign labor trying to make an argument disconnected with reality that they expect will boost their personal interests. OTOH, dozens of academic studies have suggested that there's a glut of STEM workers, with as many as 3 additional people able to do STEM work being added for every STEM job.

2. Bodyshopping just keeps on increasing since the 1970s, while real jobs are extremely rare.

3. There is such a thing as professional ethics. There are jobs that should not be done, apps that should not be developed, data-bases that should never be created. And guest-workers and off-shoring are means to get around standards of professional ethics... while depressing compensation and providing cover for age discrimination.

4. BLS "hours worked" statistics bear little relationship with reality. Their numbers are well below anything I've experienced or what many others report, and we're partially at fault. I've never charged people for the full hours I've had to spend doing research and experimentation to figure out the best way to implement something. i've never put those hours on a time sheet. But then the managers have almost always discouraged honest reporting of hours worked, and every time we carefully and conscientiously reported in detail how we've invested our time in the work, they've thrown a fit, wailing about "unauthorized over-time". Even when it got approved by 3-4 levels of managers, the execs have rescinded authorization after the work has already been done.

5. Recruiting has been racing down-hill into total dysfunctionality over the last 25 years or so. Hardly any of today's "recruiters" can read a resume. They don't have any idea what the "requirements" and the "nice to haves" are. The "talent" or "candidate" tracking or management systems impede matching up capable people with their optimal work; they hide talent rather than bring it to light. Capable, conscientious head-hunters often worked without resumes, were active in taking steps to get together talented individuals with the appropriate hiring managers, and were far more effective (and ended up with much higher match/commissions per candidate). And they got the people matched up quickly.

6. Execs are much more reluctant to fly capable candidates in for interviews, to relocate new-hires or retained employees, and to train new-hires or retained employees. 20-25 years ago, it was common for employers to plan on such things, and would invest 2 to 12 weeks (occasionally even more) in formal training of STEM new-hires, and about 2-4 weeks per year for retained employees. They're much more apt to drag their heals for 6-18 months on a single hire rather than invest in a couple weeks of training.

I put the blame for much of this on inflation, changes in tax laws and regulations, and on the ready supply of cheap, pliant guest-workers with flexible/questionable ethics. The shift from super-computers and mainframes to micro-computers have also driven BYOD thinking (which also contributes to the "do your own training even though you have no idea what training we desire you to have, and it has to match exactly our most bizarre whims in that regard" thinking) and the shift in relative costs of hardware and talent have also had negative effects. A shop that planned on having 200 developers working on 1-3 products using a $10M super-computer with work-stations and terminals for each (plus real offices, secretarial support, receptionists, parking, a couple hundred sales and marketing people, product managers, managers...) is now conceived of as a temporary gig for 6-12 developers using $1200-$3500 apiece microcomputers (plus smart-phones or tablets) that they're expected to buy and upgrade, themselves, out of their after-tax pay, in a bull-pen or cubicles or the CEO's apartment.

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In the eighties and nineties, we heard that it didn't matter that the U.S. was shipping so many jobs overseas, because in the future, Americans would all become programmers and other highly skilled professionals. (Never mind that many perfectly intelligent people would rather have simpler, lower-stress jobs.) The U.S., however, didn't do anything to ensure that we'd have that technical talent when the time came.

When everyone predicted that the future would require thousands of workers trained in IT, biochemistry, physics, etc., many other countries provided incentives (free, or even paid education, etc.) to produce those workers. Meanwhile, the U.S. produces more journalism graduates each year than the total number of journalism jobs--both available and filled--that exist in the country, Instead of investing in education to produce the talent we need, we're producing people with unneeded skills and massive student loan debt.

This is why, in the IT department of the major clothing chain/import company I currently work for, roughly two-thirds of the skilled labor is from India. Some of them are now Americans, but most are here on H1B1 visas. I'm here on a contract through an Indian agency that's renting me out to another Indian company that has a contract to build and maintain this San Francisco company's networks and data center. In addition to the H1Bi workers, there's a large offshore team in India. So, we're shipping money to India to pay people to help us ship money to sweatshops in China.

In my wife's field--biopharmaceuticals--it's a similar story: a large percentage of the scientists and regulatory affairs people are from other countries. Part of the reason for this state of affairs is economical. The H1B1 system has helped keep many wages close to flat since 2000. Mostly, however, the U.S. does not plan ahead and create incentives that steer college freshmen into technology or science. There really is a shortage, and it's a national embarrassment. For every tax dollar we saved by not bankrolling computer science degrees, how many dollars now go overseas?

The above referenced article about "IT Sleeping Pods" is a perfect corollary for this one. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/how-sleeping-pods-will-keep-a-datacentre-awake-during-the-olympics/396
Imagine if someone suggested that HR use sleeping pods so they could be at the office anytime they were needed. HA! If IT personnel were anywhere near to being a truly scarce and precious resource, accommodations would be made so they could work from someplace comfortable, like at home??? Oh I forgot, you need IT people to do that. Well if there was a set of Executives, that needed to be present at work all the time for some critical function, you can bet a bunch of offices would be converted into nice apartments for them. Not sleeping pods in the hallway.
Let???s face it, IT people are the Morlock Plumbers of the modern world. The Eloi are never happy to see you. Because even if you fix it quickly and perfectly, the very fact they had to call you means there was something wrong that they could not handle.

My experience (2 cents worth) I have over 20 years pro experience with hardware, software, networking, etc. Over a dozen active certifications and like to be a sponge on learning new stuff. I apply for a job wanting every skill like DBA, CCNP, all MS server software, client support, etc. and they only expect to pay $35k then they quote HR pay standards that are way out of date (some prior to SQL's existence?!?) and I cannot make them understand why they should pay more. I quit traveling, seeking, and waiting for the viable and now am self-employed making $35k working around 1/4 the time a full-time job would have. My family of four wants more and so do I. Bottom line - I refuse to settle for such low pay when I've had to memorize thousands upon thousands of textbook technical details nobody like an accountant would even venture to discuss such as Ipsec, or OSI models, etc. Yes, I'm bitter and my brain hurts at the scope of skills I have. Maybe negotiation isn't one of them, but I never wanted it to be. I do not believe I'm over exaggerating that I should be making 6 figures easily, but I also don't want to live in downtown Hot'Lanta to get there.

In the US, various companies complain about this shortage at least bi-monthly. Wages do not go up much, except perhaps in a few very high demand locations for a few very high pressure industries.

The reason is simple: they want the government to permit more visas for people they can hire for less money than they have to pay local talent. I got into what you might call the low end of high end IT training around 2001-2, and the same wailing and gnashing of teeth was going on then, even as IT employment was dropping rapidly. It has never stopped. When someone points out the contradictions, the firms claim, "well the local talent doesn't have the skills we need." The actual fact was that the firms were looking for people with three skill sets, which, combined, were worth $95-100k per year and they wanted to pay those rare birds $50-65k per year, depending on location. But a guy from a developing country with those skills or close to them ( in so far as such birds existed) could be had for $45-55k per year.

That's the whole story. Here in the U.S. it is still the same. My guess is, so too with the UK. The screaming and wailing will never cease and the actual, true, core story will never change.

Really interesting comments above.
It is the same in the UK. There is another aspect to this here though. Our public sector is enormous and academics, colleges, universities etc use the idea of skills shortages to press for money - to fund academic lifestyles. 10 - 3 day, long holidays, navel contemplation for the greater good of humanity. All that Jazz. Great work if you can get it. The reality is that the grads are left scraping around for work experience while their profs go on to the next sabatical. It's really quite gut churning. We should be advising the youngsters to avoid IT - it is becoming the modern janitorial career.

I just checked the local Craig's List for IT jobs. It's usually a good indicator of local demand. There are only about 20 for the last week. Averaging about 3 a day with half being individuals wanting free solutions to technical problems that sound like a lack of RTFM and the others being of the ilk of this gem: "Cumputer programer SEO needed-pro-bono".

Should I go back to commercial construction or retry my long ago foray into film extra work? I met Jessica Alba once. She's a very nice person and a pretty woman.

I was a software development manager for 15 years. I hired approximately 50 people (3 or 4 per year). I would have liked to hire great, experienced people who would be productive immediately. My high technology company could meet almost any salary requirement. Unfortunately, I never found the prefect software developer. I made do with the candidates that were available (younger, less knowledgeable, did not know our programming language, did not know the domain) and spent 6 months to a year training them. Yes, I filled my empty positions. No, I never found the perfect candidate; except for internal transfers.

Pretty good article

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=533346337

Someone with a HR background making sense, course if he was in the job, he'd be saying "We have the best people and a steep learning curve or some such...