lawrence mcalpin

Recently I had a discussion with @SoundSystemSDC about small companies in small towns competing to attract and retain professional tech talent and stem the brain drain.  This topic had come up in the recent The Combine conference here in Bloomington, Indiana.  A group of Midwestern executives discussed the challenges of tech companies in the Midwest.  During the Q&A session, I asked how an Indiana business can compete given the gross disparity in compensation that you have compared to larger cities like New York City and San Francisco.  I even pointed out a job description for a Wall Street job that paid in the six digits and pointed out how much more it was than a similar job for something in Indianapolis.  The response was simply “well it’s better to raise a family here and you can’t buy a home in San Francisco.”  Which no one really cares about when they first go on the job market.  And once you’re launched on your career path, moving to the middle of nowhere isn’t generally considered a step up.

Sorry.  If you’re in a small town and you want to attract and retain top tech professionals you’re going to have to try harder than that.

What can a small town with small companies do to attract and retain the top tech talent?  Well, how about:

Alternate Compensation

Offer equity compensation to make up for the smaller salary compensation.  Let them use some company resources for personal projects.  Or something else.  I don’t know.  Be creative.  But compensation doesn’t always have to be pecuniary.

Quality of Life

If you can’t pay Wall Street wages, don’t demand Wall Street hours.  In New York City, day cares close at 7:30pm.  The day care my daughter goes to here in Bloomington closes at 5:30pm.  The day cares close at 7:30 in NYC because people are still working then.  You want that top talent to move over to you, but you can’t pay the same?  Point out that a move from a 60 hour week to a 40 hour week takes into account 33% of that wage difference already.

Embrace Attrition

Developers crave new experiences.  Accept it and embrace it.  Get smaller companies within the same community to work together to find ways that can allow for employees who want new experiences to move ‘laterally’ to other companies in the area.  That is: help your employees get a job with other companies in your area. 

If you work for a larger company, chances are they make it easy to apply for dozens of other opportunities as they arise within the same company.  Even outside of the larger companies, in NYC, Chicago, or SF, you can find hundreds of job opportunities with the drop of a hat.  I got cold calls from recruiters daily.  Here in Indiana, not so much.  Realize that people want the opportunity to move on to other opportunities and develop new skills or work on something new.  Make it easy for them to do so.  Brain drain is bad for everyone; but it’s better to lose your best guy to someone up the street than to see them leave the local community (or the state) entirely.  And if you help them go on good terms, they’re more likely to come back.

Also, the cross pollination within the community creates additional bonds that help retain that talent.

Promote the Community

Use the power of local government or band together with fellow local businesses to promote each other and local leaders in the tech community.  People want to be recognized for their accomplishments.  Big companies and big cities tend to anonymize people: even the cream of the crop can easily end up being no more than a small fish in a BIG pond.  Maybe they’d rather come here where they can be a big fish in a small pond.  But give them the satisfaction of having people around who will notice that.  Otherwise, they’re no better off.

Pay Them What They’re Worth, But Be Selective

If you can afford it, suck it up and pay them what they can earn.  People like money, and the better cost of living is attractive when your salary is the same.  Obviously this is a risky approach.  No one wants to get stuck with a total dud who soaks up twice the salary.  But if you’re smart and you’re careful, the experiences these developers have honed in the bigger and much more highly competitive markets can be very beneficial to you - and that one developer can very likely be worth a small team. 

I noticed a huge increase in the caliber of the developers I worked with when I first moved to Chicago (and, later, New York City) from the smaller Midwestern town I first worked in (even though I worked at a Fortune 50 company that could afford to pay a pretty competitive rate.)  Where I worked initially, people usually came in straight out of college and stayed there their entire lives.  Developers I worked with in Chicago and New York City, on the other hand, were constantly exposed to new ideas and new concepts and tended to learn a lot more.  Sure, the internet helps spread those ideas to even the remote places on Earth, but the fact is the big cities attract the better developers since there are more challenges there and more people to learn from.  You can get more developers for the same amount of money here in the Midwest, but you often get what you pay for.

Telework

OK, maybe you can’t match that six digit coastal salary after all.  Sadness.  But I bet that just as that New York City salary dwarfs our Midwestern Indiana tech salaries, there are places where our measly offering would be pretty attractive.  Where people might want to live despite the fact that it’s not here in Bloomington, for whatever inexplicable reason they might have.

Once upon a time, that might have been a deal breaker.  Businesses tended to form near related businesses in the past for a reason.  Distance made it harder to trade, communicate, and meet one another.  Nowadays, a little invention called the Internet makes it easy to do all three of those things in our underwear.  With miles and miles between each of us.  So why are we still expecting everyone to sit down next to each other?  In my experience telecommuting, I can assure you, I am far more productive now that I have fewer officeplace distractions.

So while your Big City competitors are busy paying half of their budget on overpriced real estate and have half of their workforce tied up suiting up and battling a century old subway system, you can focus on more important things like real work with real people wherever they happen to want to live.

Anything Else?

There are probably plenty of ideas out there that a smaller town with small companies can do to make itself more attractive besides compensation.  But seriously guys, give up on the cost of living calculator argument.  It’s not compelling.  If cost of living is your argument, we may as well move to McAllen, Texas.  I hear it’s pretty cheap to live there.

You want to stop brain drain?  Either match the coastal salaries, drain brains from some other community (via teleworking), and/or find a way to nurture a stronger sense of community that instills a sense of belonging, where ones’ successes are noticed and celebrated, and ones’ skills are actively developed - even if it means working within the local community to make it easier - or encourages - people - and their ideas - to move from company to company.