The Valley Lacks Flexibility, Not Talent

Right now there are a lot of reports about large companies in the Valley not being able to find the talent they need. There are also a lot of reports about companies bending over backwards financially to retain the people they have.

But what I found working for a large Valley corporate in the last few years is that it is not hard to find talent. The real problem is that companies are not ready for new talent. There is not enough flexibility in them to really embrace change and use creative, innovative and hungry developers to the best of their abilities. Companies want the new and cool, and then they try to force it to function just like the old and rusty. It’s like trying to turn a 1980s Honda into a Hybrid with some batteries and duct tape.

Let’s face realities here: it’s no doubt tempting and cool for many developers to work for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook or Twitter to name but a few. Where it stops being cool is when gifted and courted developers face outdated infrastructures and the attitude of large Valley corporates.

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Outdated and Impersonal HR Practices

The first obstacle I found that weeds out many prospective hires (and by weeding out I mean they look at it, go “pffft” and move on) are HR practices and the companies’ job sites. Check out the HR sites “Jobs @ corporate” of some of the companies and you will see what I mean. The sites look awful, are hard to navigate, ask you to enter a lot of information and responses take weeks rather than hours. A lot of them need you to sign up for them and keep a CV on file. None of them allow you to link to an online resumé – they ask flat out for a Word Document on first contact. Seeing that Web developers take a lot of pride in their online portfolios and keep their LinkedIn profile up to date this just appears incredibly dated.

Then there’s the standardization – every time I wrote a technical job description for a very-much-needed role it went down the rabbit hole of the corporate machine and came out as something incomprehensible full of boilerplate requirements.

Why would a HTML5 developer need to have four years of UNIX experience? What do I care if the applicant has a masters degree or not? Try and read some job descriptions right now and you will see what I mean. A lot of cruft and nothing about the real job at hand.

Even worse, job descriptions have incredible inaccuracies. The other day I got an offer to become the “HTML6” expert for a “very important company” from a random headhunter. Good luck finding that one.

The best HR people I worked with trusted experts in the company to write job descriptions and were very responsive to the needs and questions of the applicants. HR should be always on the lookout for people in the company who spend their time and effort communicating with others on the web and then reward them by trusting their judgment.

Instead of using infrastructure of the 1990s with wording from the 1970s, companies should let their employees be their spokespeople and hire through word of mouth. HR should be there to help with the paperwork and be quick in responding and organizing the interview process.

International Companies Acting Like Local Shops

Right now I see a lot of people from Europe moving to the U.S. to keep their jobs as companies cut down outside the Valley whilst complaining about the lack of talent in it. Go figure.

The only reasons I can fathom is that companies still don’t know how to deal with remote workers or fear the work legislation and worker’s rights in Europe and other parts of the world. It might even be that they fear the paperwork that comes with it. It strikes me odd that these companies build systems that allow families to stay connected although they are in different countries and localize their products to different markets but fail to do the same for their own systems and practices.

Remote teams are a great thing if you do it right: a team in India, a team in the U.K. and a team in the U.S. communicating and working together in a sensible way means you can build your products 24/7. The time difference can mean tasks handed over can get finished by your colleagues while you sleep. QA can look at stuff built just hours before and give feedback by the time the engineers return to work.

If there is no talent to be found in the valley, why not hire in Europe, Asia or India? Foster a culture of embracing this idea and don’t treat non-Valley employees as second class citizens and you will not have any trouble hiring at all.This also leads to another issue I see with Valley companies – they tend to hire boutique employees and rockstar teams.

Rockstars Need Roadies

One other big mistake is that companies are always on the lookout for the next rockstar developer.

There is a myth that there are developers of awesome who do everything right and are amazingly quick in turning around a new product whilst having lots of very creative and visionary ideas. Don’t believe the hype.

Of course some developers are very gifted, but they also tend to leave quite a mess behind. Much like real rockstars you need roadies who do the dirty work – turn the awesome ground-breaking ideas into working products that scale and fit nicely into a framework for example. By exclusively supporting the rockstars and by focusing on hiring more and more superstars you will end up with roadies and a stage crew that do a bad job connecting the cables and making the PA work. Then the songs of your rockstar can’t be heard.

Rockstars should be made, not found. Instead of hiring someone from the outside and making everyone else depressed that they aren’t as good, foster, support and most of all listen to your people and find the next shining star. Then you have someone who already knows the environment he or she has to shine in instead of someone who comes, shines, fizzes out and leaves scorched ground behind.

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