Attracting Tech Talent: Start with Culture Redesign

https://www.csc.gov.sg/articles/attracting-tech-talent-start-with-culture-redesign

by jingwen • 7 years ago

2 1 7 years ago

csc.gov.sg

mdorazio• 7 years ago

Alternate view coming from consulting with large traditional companies for many years:

Three things you need to attract tech talent:

1) Pay more money. Not willing or able to pay more? Then you don't actually want tech talent, you want tech labor. This is far and away the #1 issue holding back every city, BigCo, and startup that complains about not being able to attract tech talent, to the point where every time someone says they just can't find people, you should ask how much they're offering and then end the conversation when they inevitably give you some ridiculously low number.

2) The exception to #1 is... offer work on things people actually care about. Know why highly qualified engineers trip over themselves to work at SpaceX despite the awful working conditions? Because they actually care about advancing the state of human spaceflight. Your MarTech / FinTech / niche SaaS whatever metoo bullshit company is not compelling to people who are positioned to be able to work on things they actually care about.

3) Remove the red tape. Kill the HR hiring circus shenanigans. Kill the stupid performance metrics. (In the case of Singapore) Kill the barriers to immigrate as a tech worker. Kill the dozen layers of management and twelve meetings to actually accomplish anything precedent in big companies and government organizations. Etc. Tech Talent wants to get shit done, not talk about getting shit done while waiting for three separate sign-offs to even get started.

The other things mentioned in this article are nice, but are generally tier 2 considerations when you dig into what people actually want vs. talk about wanting.

Attracting Tech Talent: Start with Culture Redesign

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