As you pointed out, the October 7 EE Times documented a shortage of embedded systems and RTOS software specialists. I thought about this today as I watched the weak market performance of INTS today in the face of WIND's strong advance. This divergence could become a significant competitive advantage for WIND as it seeks qualified employees to sustain its growth. If the trend continues, many prospective employees are going to want a cute little tornado on their business card. For the benefit of other readers, here is an excerpt from the EE Times article:
San Jose, Calif. - Hiring of software specialists continues unabated, and companies at the Embedded Systems Conference here last month agreed that their head count would grow faster if they could find more qualified people. In the real-time environment that dominates the embedded industry, good programmers are a highly regarded lot.
"The only thing limiting our growth is the ability to hire people fast enough," said David Larrimore, marketing vice president at Wind River Systems Inc. (Alameda, Calif.). "We're probably hiring on the order of 15 to 20 engineers and programmers per quarter, and we'd hire more if we could. Overall, our head count is going up at 50 percent per year."
The difficulty of finding people who can make a contribution to the design of a real-time operating system or the development tools that surround it has managers looking at alternatives. In the Silicon Valley region of northern California, many organizations have basically given up hope of expanding their staffs quickly.
"In the Valley, it's hopeless," said Greg Olson, marketing vice president at Integrated Systems Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.). "What's become interesting now is Europe, since there's much less turnover there. With salaries going up in the Valley, the cost of German labor that used to seem very high doesn't look so bad."
-Greg |
