Free meals, elaborate and entertaining work areas, and other perks like dry cleaning and doggie day care are also becoming common. So great is the demand that teenagers are able to turn computer skills into summer internships that demand travel and executive perks. For companies that depend on brilliant people with high-tech experience, attracting and retaining top talent has become an art. While finding the talent requires primarily time and money, we have found that keeping talent has more to do with supporting an environment that fosters creativity and a sense of personal ownership in one's work. I mean empowering technologists to apply knowledge and imagination in the development of something new and valuable to the marketplace.
Many people have the wrong impression of engineers.
They are not the stereotypes we see in films like Revenge of the Nerds or unkempt mathematicians that live like hermits. Just as visual artists, musicians, and poets create beautiful works using the mediums of their art, the best technologists are true creators who use languages and technology platforms to answer riddles, solve problems, and give life to digital masterpieces that serve the broader community. Recently, I met with an acquaintance working in Silicon Valley and shared with him a story about a rewarding experience I had working with one of our clients. It involved one of our engineers flying to the client site and working unceasingly until he had found a creative solution to their problem. My acquaintance could not appreciate the idea that our engineering team felt so personally invested in solving the specific needs of our customers.