We live in a very interesting time when it comes to startups, innovation and jobs.
Unemployment in the U.S. is above 8% and we’re in the longest streak of this level of unemployment since WWII.
On the other hand, the tech sector continues on an almost unbridled tear. Spurred on, in part, by an increasingly lowered threshold of the cost of launching a new startup, and in part by a general exuberance over the hyper growth of tech companies – growth that hasn’t been seen since the last internet bubble.
Facebook now has 3,500 employees and Groupon has more than 7,000. In spite of the jobless rate in the rest of the country at large, tech companies in the SF Bay Area, NYC, Boston and other smaller tech hubs continue their struggle to find enough programmers, designers, and product and marketing folks to meet the growth demands of their businesses.
The “war for talent” is a term originally coined by Steven Hankin of McKinsey & Company in 1997. It’s also the name of a Harvard Business Press booked published in 2001.
And now, it’s the name of a Bay Area conference founded by Justin Bedecarre where startup founders, VCs and talent mavens gather to try to get a leg up on their competition by getting uber-savvy when it comes to sourcing, attracting and hiring the best talent (not the least of which are software engineers).