With record low unemployment, the talent market is the more brutally competitive. Even with the recent spate of layoffs, the competition for IT workers will not abate. Generational demographics and the growing level of knowledge required to contribute to modern businesses will keep the war for IT talent hot. The current slowdown in the technology sector is barely a respite between talent battles. Planning for the workforce required to execute the business plan is now as important to corporate strategy as arranging the financing.
Business strategies collapse without both.
Although most companies understand the importance of attracting and retaining employees, many lack a coherent approach to achieving their talent goals. The practices required to attract, develop, and retain outstanding talent have been understood for decades. Knowledge is the raw material of software development. Although software tools can help record and manage knowledge, they do not create and apply it. Perhaps no industry in history has been as knowledge intense as software development, an industry whose only product is proceduralized knowledge.