Here is a write up about Citrix from the Sun-Sentinel (S. FL.)
today:
sun-sentinel.com
Also another story that mentions Citrix from the same paper today:
sun-sentinel.com
Storys are printed below:
Perks, great pay lure techies
By L.A. LOREK Business Writer
Instead of cubicles, computer engineers at Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale get their own glass-enclosed offices.
The offices look more like college dorm rooms than Corporate America. Slinkys, stuffed animals, airplanes, signs and cartoons crowd the spaces next to the ever-present computer and monitor.
Offices aren't the only perquisite. Everyone at Citrix gets free sodas at work and fresh fruit delivered to the breakroom daily.
Other benefits include a gym, a jacuzzi, an all-expense-paid family weekend every year at a resort hotel. All employees get dental, vision and medical benefits paid in full and stock options.
"When you come to work, we want you to feel good about being here," said Leslie Pendergast, Citrix's human resources director.
With 85 openings for mostly high-tech jobs, Citrix works hard to keep all the employees it has. Retaining high-tech workers is one of the biggest challenges facing companies throughout South Florida and nationwide.
These gold-collar workers -- software engineers, database specialists and computer scientists -- have become some of the most sought-after workers in the country.
The shortage of high-tech workers has created a fierce job market, but it has also created a new corporate culture that values workers' contributions and their family and other obligations outside the office.Computer jobs wide open
According to industry estimates, 200,000 to 400,000 jobs requiring computer software skills stand open now.
Nationwide, IBM has 5,000 positions open for experienced professionals who possess technology skills.
"Everyone in the computer industry is competing for the same people," said Jim Bunch, staffing manager for International Business Machines in Raleigh, N.C. "Every month, the salaries go up."
A project manager in the information technology industry can make anywhere from $75,000 to $120,000, Bunch said. IBM also hires people with liberal arts degrees and trains them.
Recruiters constantly call high-tech companies trying to lure workers away with more money and bigger benefits.
Less than a decade ago, IBM offered early buyout plans to employees to reduce its work force. Now it is trying to lure back some of those same employees -- especially old mainframe programmers who possess the COBOL programming skills to fix the Year 2000 computer problem. The crisis stems from computer code written in two digits for the date instead of four. That means the systems would recognize 00 as 1900 instead of 2000. Unless all data is tracked down and fixed, many businesses and institutions' computer systems will be thrown into chaos on Jan. 1, 2000.
Year 2000 software programmers can command salaries as high as $150,000 or $200,000 because of the fierce demand for workers and the impending deadline for fixing the problem.
In addition to competitive salaries, IBM offers year-end bonuses ranging from 5 percent to 25 percent of a worker's salary depending on how their department performed that year. IBM paid out $1.3 billion in bonuses for 1997.
But money will only go so far. Opportunities and challenges keep people. Employees want to do something that is meaningful, Bunch said.
"We make sure the word or buzz is that IBM really cares," Bunch said.
High-tech employers like IBM know the job-skills shortage is only going to get worse. The U.S. unemployment rate is at 4.7 percent, about the lowest it has been in 25 years. It's even tighter in the high-tech field.
Within a decade, companies will create about 1.3 million new jobs requiring computer skills, but the number of people earning computer-science degrees in the United States has dropped off since the 1980s.
Scarce and highly sought
So the old law of supply and demand means that high-tech workers have become scarce and sought-after.
Most companies already offer high salaries and stock options, so to lure new employees and retain existing ones, employers have become creative in offering a variety of perks.
Signing bonuses. Flexible time. Telecommuting. Foosball in the company break room. Casual dress environments that allow employees to walk barefoot through the halls. 401(k) plans, on-site child-care centers.
In Silicon Valley outside of San Jose, Calif., the competition for techies has turned the workplace into a playground. Employees furnish their offices with bean-bag chairs, surfboards and cappuccino makers and some companies allow their employees to bring their pets to work.
Those trends haven't spread to South Florida yet, but they might.
Because technology workers have one of the highest turnover rates in the country of 38 percent, compared to the national turnover rate of 13 percent for all other industries, employers will do anything to keep them, according to a survey released this month by William M. Mercer Inc. Almost half the 203 medium to large companies surveyed reported that turnover costs them more $10,000 per employee who must be replaced.
The survey identified dissatisfaction over compensation as the major reason for employees leaving. Employees also reported unhappiness with "job fit," the culture of the company or manager, and employee relations.
Siemens Telecom Networks, which has 1,100 employees in Boca Raton, has about 100 openings for telecommunications engineers, said Benton Howie, the company's director of human resources.
"Essentially there isn't a software engineer that we've got that can't find a job making equal or more than what we pay," Howie said. "The protection you have to have is you have to make your company a great place to work."
Siemens recognizes its employees' family and other obligations outside of work. The company's location in Boca Raton often attracts employees and keeps them here, Howie said. It offers lunchtime concerts, basketball tickets, golf tournaments and other incentives to keep employees happy.
"There are virtually no technical people left in South Florida," said Pamela Gant, manager of staffing for Sensormatic Electronics. "We try to come up with new and innovative ways to retain people."
Every year, Sensormatic has something called the 100-percent club which rewards the company's top performers with a trip to an exotic place. This year, it's a safari to South Africa.
Sensormatic surveys its employees to find out what types of perks they are interested in and what things the company can change to make their jobs better, Gant said.
"I think it's important to keep up with the pace of your organization," Gant said. "You really do need to keep asking employees what have we done for you lately, and what can we do for you in the future."
"Money is not the top thing that keeps people in their jobs," Gant said. "Challenging work is what keeps people happy."
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High-tech workers in high demand
By L.A. LOREK Business Writer
South Florida companies scrambled in January to hire engineers laid off from Racal Datacom, a telecommunications company in Sunrise.
Jo Moskowitz, Florida's executive director of the American Electronics Association, called Racal 10 days after the announcement to try to place some of the engineers with local companies.
"They told me I was too late, they already had jobs or job offers," Moskowitz said.Annual per-person cost of turnover
In South Florida and nationwide, companies face a chronic shortage of high-tech workers. Computer programmers, systems analysts, computer scientists, telecommunications engineers lead the list of the most sought-after skilled workers.
Everyone wants the same hard-to-find, bright software developers with leadership skills, the latest programming skills, and knowledge of hot computer languages such as C++ and Java.
As many as 346,000 vacancies in information technology positions exist in the U.S. today, according to a study released in January from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group based in Washington, D.C.
Unemployment among computer scientists and programmers has dipped below 2 percent.
In the next decade, the job market will get even tighter. The study cited a 43-percent drop in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in computer science annually at U.S. universities between 1986 and 1994.
In 1995, Florida colleges and universities awarded over 20,000 bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in a science or engineering field, 3.2 percent of the national total, according to information from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
No one knows how many vacancies remain open in Florida, but every weekend newspaper help-wanted sections contain dozens of ads for high-tech workers and local companies have many vacancies.
Citrix Systems, a growing software company with 300 employees in Fort Lauderdale, has openings for 85 employees, most requiring high-tech skills. Earlier this year, Citrix opened a Salt Lake City, Utah, office to help recruit more people from the West Coast who didn't want to relocate to Florida.
"We've got a very strong focus nationwide on college recruiting. We've found most of our success on that level," said Leslie Pendergrast, human resource director for Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale.
Siemens Telecom Networks needs 100 employees -- primarily telecommunications engineers.
"The talent pool is fixed or shrinking and the demand is increasing," said Benton Howie, director of human resources for Siemens with 1,200 employees in Boca Raton. "Salaries are escalating."
In Florida, the American Electronics Association reports the average wage is $41,000 for high-tech workers, compared to $24,000 for average private sector wages.
But many software engineers are getting far more than that. Nationwide, a programmer in 1996 earned a base salary of $66,000, a more than 14-percent gain over 1995, data from the Information Technology Association of America show.
Even at that pay level, the jobs are hard to fill.
Sensormatic Electronics Corp., with 1,100 employees in Deerfield Beach, has openings for 160 employees and scours the country trying to find them. Sometimes Sensormatic lures workers away from companies in Silicon Valley using expensive corporate headhunters.
"It's taking longer to fill jobs -- up to six months for certain niche jobs," said Pamela Gant, manager of staffing services at Sensormatic. One of the toughest jobs to fill is for engineers who do computer-aided design.
IBM gives its employees a $2,000 bonus for referring new employees, said Jim Bunch, staffing manager for IBM, based in Raleigh, N.C.
The world's largest computer firm has 5,000 openings nationwide. It hires 3,000 to 4,000 college students every year and another 7,000 to 10,000 professionals in the industry, Bunch said.
"Right now just about anyone out there can get a job," Bunch said.
The robust economy has led to a tight local job market for high-tech professionals, but for start-ups and small employers, the search to find skilled workers has become especially acute.
"For most small- to medium-sized companies their No. 1 problem is attracting and retaining high-tech workers," Moskowitz said. "If they don't, they can't run their business."
Compared with large, established business, Florida has many emerging companies that often lack the name recognition and ability to pay top dollar. These companies also have fewer recruiting resources.
Lambda Novatronics, with 160 employees in Pompano Beach, struggles to find engineers, said Howard Wasserman, the company's executive vice president and general manager. The 33-year-old company makes power supplies and other electronics for Lockheed Martin, Honeywell and E-Systems.
"At any time, we have two to five engineering jobs open. That might not sound like a lot but for a company our size, it hurts," Wasserman said.
It can take Lambda a year or longer to find a qualified engineer, Wasserman said.
Federal officials see expanding the technology labor force as a top priority. Kelly H. Carnes, the Commerce Department's deputy assistant secretary for technology policy, said technology jobs account for close to 50 percent of the nation's economic growth.
The high-tech shortage affects more than just technology companies. If jobs go unfilled, stock brokers, hospitals, real estate offices and retailers also are unable to design and operate information systems.
The shortage has attracted the attention of the Clinton administration, which announced plans in January to spend $28 million in new initiatives to encourage training more programmers.
The government will offer $3 million in grants to schools, businesses and local government to retrain laid-off workers as programmers. It will spend another $8 million to build a help-wanted World Wide Web site where employers can post job offerings and workers can post resumes. The Commerce Deparment will spend $17 million to bring technology resources, including training, to poor people.
The technology companies have also lobbied Congress to pass a bill allowing more foreign workers into the country for up to six years under the H-1B visa program.
On March 8, Senator Spencer Abraham, R-Mich, introduced a bill to raise the number of temporary foreign workers by a almost a third from 65,000 to 90,000. However, the visas are not strictly for technology jobs, they allow all kinds of foreign workers into the country from lawyers to fashion models.
The Clinton administration wants to keep the cap exactly as it is, arguing that any changes would likely come at the expense of U.S. citizens and suggesting that the ceiling be adjusted only as a last resort.
"The real right answer always gets back to education and training," said Carnes with the Commerce Department. "Every job from here on out is going to be a high-skilled job."
Joe |
