I consistently hear this now. Suddenly engineers, GUI folks, and online sales people are scarce.
In the last few months, many new startups emerged. I guess they snapped up all the good engineers because now it seems that everyone has moved somewhere and is planning to stay there for a while. This is why I am trying to make contacts in outsourcing overseas for engineering.
GUI people did the same thing and switched jobs, although most of the ones I’ve heard of went to larger companies. In my experience, GUI people tend to be more conservative. Not sure why. I haven’t seen many take the chance of joining an early stage startup. Many startups have told me stories of failed attempts at hiring a GUI resource on staff. They turned out to be not that good, not experienced enough, or just out of school. I had to go create my own list of GUI design shops and resources, and keep track of everyone who is consulting.
The real scarce resource is online sales folks. The really good ones are truly hard to find. I feel fortunate that I got to know a ton of them at the best training ground for that: Yahoo!. Many of them have moved on, but mostly to higher positions/pay elsewhere. Here’s the kicker: to lure them away sometimes requires a lot of tinkering with compensation. For early stage companies, that’s really tough because they don’t have a lot of cash. I am now trying to see if some of the few out there are willing to consult. Some of them are actually thinking about it thankfully. About every early stage company that is thinking of selling advertising has no experience in this area and certainly no contacts at all. It’s one of the most valuable things that I can do is connect them to a truly good online sales person.
Time to get creative in finding ways of solving this personnel dilemma….