They want to play with the newest, latest, hottest things - if you re using XML, for example, that will attract their attention. You must be willing to send people to seminars and conferences, but you really want people who will pick up skills on the job - that s very attractive to programmers. Load up on the bonuses and size of stock grants, so your techies get paid only when the company succeeds. They want to know where your business is headed. Where they see a hit, that s where they re going to work.
Salaries tend to be relatively consistent, but options vary by many orders of magnitude.
There s not often a right answer, Schmitt says, but there are some answers that are less wrong than others. But if an employee leaves, they have nothing. If it s a longer project, do it with interim payouts. The incentive is tied to specific milestones, with quantitative goals. Most often, they cite the lack of any bottom-line impact.