Software engineers hard to find - Shortage of trained IT talent challenges Chicago companies

Software engineers hard to find - Shortage of trained IT talent challenges Chicago companies
By Ann Meyer
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
October 17, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-1017-out-technology-20101017,0,6457102,full.story


If you're looking for a career on the cutting edge, think about becoming a software engineer.

Skilled software engineers and Web developers are in such short supply in the Chicago area that Adam McCombs, chief executive of technology firm JumpForward, says finding qualified job candidates is "the bane of my existence."

With a national unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, many people assume employers have their pick of applicants for any job, McCombs said. Not so. Within every down job market exist bright spots, which in Chicago means tech jobs, particularly for software engineers.

The continued growth of the Internet and mobile technology is fueling the increased demand for IT professionals, McCombs said. Computer application software engineers will be the fastest growing job category over the next eight years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which projects a 32 percent increase in the number of computer software engineers between 2008 and 2018. The total work force is expected to grow 8 percent during the same period.

Little wonder, then, that finding quality employees emerged as a key concern among Chicago-area technology companies surveyed in March and April for a report by the Computer Technology Industry Association and the Illinois Technology Association.
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"You have to cast your net much wider" to find the talent, said Todd Thibodeaux, chief executive of CompTia. Some companies have turned to recruiting out of state, but the soft housing market makes it difficult to relocate workers because people can't sell their homes, Thibodeaux said.

Luring high-level developers away from an existing job isn't easy because employers often use bonuses or other incentives to retain their top talent, said Thomas Annerino, senior developer at Chicago-based JumpForward.

"One good developer can do the work of three or four guys," Annerino said. "Once a company finds them, they don't let them go."

Annerino taught himself how to program when he was 11 years old. In eighth grade, he wrote an application to help teachers track students' grades.

"All the developers I know that are successful live and breathe technology every day," he said. Good programmers are persistent, patient problem solvers who love technology, Annerino added.

Chicago-based Groupon opened an office in California's Silicon Valley this year when it couldn't find Chicago developers fast enough.

It took the company about 18 months to hire 30 developers in Chicago, said Andrew Mason, founder and chief executive. "When we opened an office in Silicon Valley, it took us a matter of months to match the size of our Chicago team," he said.

The talent in Silicon Valley runs "several generations deep" because of the number of major tech companies there, Mason said. The valley "has people with enormous depth of experience working on questions that are less common in Chicago," he said.

Groupon, which is still hiring, would prefer to employ local talent, Mason said. While Groupon looks for experienced developers, it also will consider those who are "young and smart and eager to learn," Mason said. "We're looking for smart, passionate, well-rounded people."

Like many Chicago tech firms, Groupon codes its software using Ruby on Rails, but knowing the software isn't a requirement. "If you're a great engineer, you can learn the language," Mason said.

The growing use of Ruby on Rails, a Web application framework, in recent years has created developer shortages everywhere, said Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, a partner at Chicago-based 37signals. Many developers who were trained in Java or PHP simply need to be retrained, he said.

"The best advice I can give to developers who are out of a job is to spend the time to learn modern development environments like Ruby on Rails," Hansson wrote in an e-mail. "It might take some months to get up to speed, but then there are plenty of jobs available."

As Chicago's tech industry grows, job openings are increasing in the city, Thibodeaux said. Besides developers, application integration workers who can work with different types of software and platforms are in short supply, he said.

Some companies, such as child care service Sittercity.com, report difficulty finding quality-assurance workers who ensure the software is working as planned, while Matt Moog, founder of product-review service Viewpoints Network, said demand is growing for usability experts who understand both design and development.

Specialists in green IT, security, cloud and software-as-a-service also are in short supply, along with project managers and help-desk technicians, according to the CompTia report. Average salaries for software engineers in the Chicago area are about $90,000 a year, and the region employed about 131,000 IT workers in 2008, the report said.

While IT was considered a hot profession during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, the segment lost its luster when the bubble burst and many workers lost jobs, Thibodeaux said. Fewer young adults entered the profession, creating a shortage of workers today with five to 10 years of experience.

"I feel we're at 100 percent employment" for highly qualified software engineers in Chicago, said Zach Kaplan, chief executive at Chicago-based Inventables, an online marketplace for materials and technology. The company gets flooded with applications when it posts nontechnical jobs, but it struggles to find software engineers.

"We have to lure them away from what they're doing," Kaplan said.

Finding skilled software engineers is paramount to a tech company's success. JumpForward interviews three to five engineers a week as it tries to fill four to six technology jobs, but most candidates don't have current skills or they lack the passion to stay on the cutting edge, McCombs said.

"Our customers are asking for new features," McCombs said. "To stay ahead of the curve, we need to have the next brightest talent."

The shortage of talent is not just in Chicago. "I've talked to people from Silicon Valley to the East Coast, and (the shortage) is across the board," McCombs said.

Yet in the Midwest, many computer science graduates are recruited to jobs in Silicon Valley straight out of school, partly because they assume they'll find greener pastures in California.

"Each year, we see more and more of our students getting jobs at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft on the West Coast," said Sol Shatz, professor of computer science at University of Illinois at Chicago. "Those are visible companies, places that have impact."

Most of the university's software engineering students who want to stay in Chicago find jobs here, Shatz said. But jobs at Google or Microsoft are sought-after positions for those willing to relocate.

Still, working at a startup can offer developers more freedom to make decisions, said Jeff Talbot, lead developer at Inventables.

"You have the ability to have an impact on the company in a significant way and the ability to be involved in a lot of different aspects of the business," he said. He recommends job candidates get practical programming experience through internships and network through groups.

Singlehop, a Web hosting company in Chicago, can find data server engineers and systems administrators, but has found a shortage of developers in Chicago.

When the company, which offers hosting solutions, posted an online ad seeking software developers in Chicago and Silicon Valley, it received far more response in California, said Zak Boca, president and chief executive. "It was astonishing the difference," he said.

World Business Chicago has launched Chicago Career Tech, a six-month retraining program for displaced workers. Participants, who must be unemployed, will come away with skills in one of eight tech-training areas.

The program, funded by a grant from the city of Chicago, aims to train 2,100 workers in three years, said Betsy Westhoff, director of corporate partnerships. The first group of 165 participants is nearing completion of the program, which involves both classroom and hands-on experience at area companies.

Other companies are working with local colleges and universities to update curriculum.

"There's definitely a gap between what universities are teaching in their curriculums and what businesses need to happen," said Eric Peebles, chief technology officer at Sofbang.com, which offers business technology solutions.

"We interact with universities and talk about what they're teaching," said Peebles, who got his start at IBM, where he received six months of training. Most tech companies can't afford to make that training investment today, he said.

Tips for job seekers: What employers want

Skills: Consider what skills are in high demand. Developers trained to use Ruby on Rails, a language and framework invented in Chicago, and Microsoft's .Net language, are in short supply.

Education: A four-year computer science degree isn't always necessary. If you've been out of the tech scene, brush up your skills at a two-year college or try an evening jump-start program that teaches Ruby on Rails. See rubyonrails.org for resources.

Passion: Companies look for engineers who are passionate about their careers and will stay abreast of new trends. "We want people who give you more than you asked for," said Inventables' Zach Kaplan.