Finding & Retaining Talent in Hawaii

Comment

Comment by Laurence A. Lee on December 31, 2008 at 11:56pm

Haken,

Just to clarify, as my original statement poorly conveyed my chain of thought. It's not a dig against the Salary-Man looking out to provide for his family (which is respectable in every possible way); it's more a dig about how Hawaii people tend to go about getting there.

Consider the average age of people on the Mainland getting married and having kids, versus those in Hawaii, and you'll find that Hawaii people tend to take on long-term obligations (like big expenses and starting families) much earlier than their Mainland counterparts.

IMHO, Mainlanders (well, West Coast mainlanders from my limited experience) tend to invest more time establishing their careers before settling down.

Furthermore, due to the scarcity of jobs in the Islands, many people here often "settle" for the first "good paying job" they can find -- often a job in Retail Sales or Tourism. It's heartbreaking to see someone with a 4-year Accounting degree working as a Bookkeeper, or as a Salesperson at the local Macy's; but that's exactly what I often see happening.

As I've said, such people fool themselves into having "Job Satisfaction", because "Salary Security" clouds their thinking.

This kind of "take whatever you can get" mentality is not likely to help advance Technology startups in Hawaii.

Happy New Year!

Comment by John on December 31, 2008 at 5:49pm

Hi Haken, I agree with you that family life has great value. I don't think you need to defend or justify your choice.

However, start-up technology companies demand sacrifices from other aspects of life such as family. The level of focus and devotion makes balancing the two very difficult (I am not saying it's impossible just that it's very hard and most technology entrepreneurs I know are heavily work-life imbalanced).

I am also not saying that one is better than the other. Simply that, if you want to build an entrepreneurial tech sector, you will need to find people who are willing to sacrifice other parts of life.

Finally, I think a lot of startups are not simply about 'gadgets and software' that will be forgotten a few years. Many entrepreneurs are genuinely focused on making a difference in the world.

For me, it's not about code or Ruby - it's about changing how business is done in my industry. Code and technology are simply tools to how I accomplish this. My goal is to replace the lies of sales and marketing people with direct and honest information so buyers can make better, quicker decisions. To me, it's important and if I succeed, it will be something that years later I will look back at proudly.

I don't think that makes me right nor I do think it makes you wrong.

But I do think that if we are to have greater technology entrepreneurship in Hawaii, it will require more of what Laurence is advocating.

Happy New Year!

Comment by Laurence A. Lee on December 29, 2008 at 12:02pm

Part of the issue has been touched upon by previous posts.

Hawaii's Work Culture
The way I see it, the problem with Hawaii's work force is a much larger Hawaii Culture issue. People are content with "finding a job", fooling themselves into having job satisfaction ("salary security" clouds their judgment), and then they trap themselves into their job by starting families, buying homes, and buying expensive toys.

I admit, I tell the most talented kids I meet to consider a Mainland job with a large Mainland company - preferably in the Bay Area or Seattle - because I know most Honolulu Tech companies are too mediocre to learn from.  Honolulu's companies are NOT conducive to reinforcing "best practices" they learned in school.

I also advise the most talented people to RUN AWAY from any company looking for programmers to maintain legacy code -- particularly code written in COBOL and Perl. If the company is too cheap (or too lame) to refactor their code onto contemporary platforms, they don't deserve the time-of-day from fresh graduates trained in contemporary skills. It may be a fun, lucrative challenge for a while, but it's an easy way to "soil their minds" and have them "burn out" from a daily dose of Corporate BS and too many "WTF?!" moments while spelunking around in code.

The fewer WTFs you encounter while reading others' code, the happier you'll be as a Software Professional. Yes, you can quote me on that. :-p

How Local Media Can Help
The other part of the problem is, there are so few remaining in the islands with a "hunger" to excel in technology.

I invite Local Media to step up and help fill this void.  We have local News programs that routinely spend up to 10 minutes covering the weather, wave action, and surf competition results out at North Shore, yet they barely give a half-minute blurb about a Technology company like Lockheed getting a Renewable Energy contract -- and you can forget about a more involved piece that explains how this contract can lead to HIGH PAYING jobs for UH Engineering students to pursue.

IMHO, local business journalists like Howard Dicus really need their own show -- or at least a regular timeslot in the 6pm and 10pm news programs to talk about stuff like this.  These kinds of issues deserve more than an appearance on a Morning Show, where most people won't be bothered with waking up that early, and are too busy getting the kids ready for school.

If Main-Stream Media would spend more time highlighting Techology opportunities in Hawaii (which are are creating NEW, HIGH-PAYING, SATISFYING JOBS), the Brain Drain will cease.  As these "Job Creation" articles become more regular, our kids will see that there can be a viable future for them in a fast-growing, high-paying field that ISN'T involved in Tourism, Defense, or Agriculture.


In this day and age, where I can log onto the networks' websites and "Watch TV" off my Broadband Connection, I think this is a great opportunity for Local TV stations to revamp their game and start producing LOCAL CONTENT to build and retain their audience. KFVE/KHNL has the right idea by creating a centralized "Content" division -- but I'm not convinced that a few half-hour News Programs can yield enough sponsorable content for them to survive.  Good step in the right direction, though.

Stop with the Infomercials, and stop with the Network-Syndicated shows I can now watch ON DEMAND via Broadband.

We need something like "Checkers & Pogo" to stimulate the tots, a local "Bill Nye" program for the middle-schoolers, and a local-style "Hak5" for the high schoolers and beyond.  Hawaii has so much to discuss in Renewable Energy, Marine Biology, Robotics, Software, Shipping, and Military Technology, that I think there's more than enough to create 40 half-hour edutainment episodes before we start stretching for topics.

The sooner we can "sensationalize" technology in Hawaii's Media, the more likely our talented kids will stick around and seek out the high-end opportunities.  Right now, they just don't know the opportunities are there.

And yes, we need to "sensationalize" technology so the Geeks can feel a little more empowered and have a sense of career direction.  With the way Hawaii Media is broadcasting now, everyone wants to become the next Surfing Legend.  That sooo totally needs to change!  :-p

Comment by Vern Takebayashi on December 29, 2008 at 10:16am

Greg Hester wrote:
We are in agreement. I know that in the short-term we have to utilize and sometimes rely on mainland help more than we may want to. However, my challenge to this group is:
1) We are closer than many think ... keep up the pressure and be part of changing the perception so that Hawaii becomes a high technology center.
2) Encourage kids entering high school (8th graders) to pick high tech careers. These local kids will be the best talent pool in the next 8 to 10 years. Having grown up in Hawaii, they will likely want to either stay in Hawaii or come back after a mainland college experience.
3) Continue to work to build companies based here in Hawaii so these kids have a place to work when ready.

Although we are still in the planning stages, Honolulu Community College is attempting to create an IT Academy. This would involve our faculty going out to the high schools and teaching students, training teachers, and helping to develop courses to get the high school students a start in Information Technology. This attempt may be stymied by the current budget cuts, but we are trying to move forward. If you folks have any suggestions as to what you might want to see in an IT program, I would like to hear about it. We would like to offer a 2 year associates degree for starters, but would also feed into some sort of bachelor's degree with UH West Oahu and possibly HPU. Sharon Vest (another HCC instructor who belongs to Tech-Hui) is also working on this potential program. If it does get going, we would certainly welcome some of you to serve on the Advisory Committee.

Comment by Konstantin A Lukin on December 29, 2008 at 9:34am

I guess I would qualify as a young unattached person with a healthy sense of adventure, currently live on Maui, as I was working for a government contractor here, now off the project, finding it difficult to find any other viable alternatives. Most of the people I worked with were brought from the mainland, which also adds some assimilation difficulties since living here is a bit different and takes some time to adjust. As for me, I've been developing Java/Web front-ends for about 10 years now, looking for projects where I can help out. A job in the office with a 9 to 5 is not as attractive, especially if clearance is involved, would be much more inspired working for a start-up or a project that would have flexible hours, work from home, with focused and responsible people who can handle it well. And quite honestly, few people that I met are actually ready for focused independent work, so then we go back to the question whether we want to build an office environment on Hawaii, or keep Hawaii the way it is... or maybe some middle way where we get to work in these cool environmentally friendly buildings and flexible working conditions..! Maybe with our new elect president the environmental aspect will pick up a bit, so we get to enjoy a healthy balance of environment and work.

Comment by John on December 29, 2008 at 8:02am

Hi Haken,

Ruby was just an example. The situation is the same for C#, VB, LISP, Perl, database administration, etc., etc. For example, I often went to the .NET meetup in San Francisco. Every one had 100+ attendees and a lot of people leading very impressive development projects, including some startups.

In Hawaii, I think we often underestimate the number of the people and the average level of expertise that mature tech sectors have. While individual people in Hawaii may be at that level, as a whole Hawaii is not close.

I have two other observations in response to your comment:

- People who excel at startups tend to hate working at big corporations
- Developers who use open source technologies tend to be better and more valuable than .NET developers

To the extent that Hawaii developers are tolerant working at big corporations using .NET, it is a pretty strong signal that they would probably not excel at startups.

People at startups tend to enjoy heavy work/life imbalance and are generally irrationally focused on new technologies and improving their projects.

People in Hawaii tend to be happy, healthier and better adjusted than people in tech startups.

I do think there are trade-offs and one is not automatically better than the other. However, regardless of how you break down the languages or interests, I do not see how Hawaii, as a whole, is close to the talent pool needed for a strong entreprenurial tech sector.

Comment by Daniel Leuck on December 29, 2008 at 2:21am

Haken: I wish there was some statistics that showed what languages and platforms are most popular here in Hawaii.

One of the goals of TechHui is to create visibility into this sort of thing and make the information free to any interested party. It would be more informative if we had a few thousand people instead of 625, and if we had more corporate developers, but I think the group memberships already provide some useful info. Here is a breakdown of the top language interest groups:
1. Rails Hackers (Ruby Guys): 50 members, Ruby Developers: 48 members
2. Java Developers: 34 members
3. Flex (ActionScript): 32 members / PHP: 32 members
4. .NET Developers: 31 members
5. Python: 26 members
6. C/C++ Developers: 18 members

Obviously there is quite a bit of interest in Ruby, although these numbers don't give us any info about the skill level of the groups' members. The numbers are also skewed by the fact TechHui originated in the start-up and academic space (MIC, UH, etc.) There are, for example, quite a few .NET guys at the banks, hospitals, government institutions, travel/tourism companies, etc. that are not members. Hopefully we can expand membership in these areas in 2009 to create a clearer picture of the overall space.

Comment by John on December 27, 2008 at 3:20pm

Hi Haken, A lot (but not all) of the jobs require secret clearance. As you mentioned, many local techs work for the subcontactors (including big firm like Booz Allen) who can get you clearances or put you in positions that do not require clearance. I am sure it takes more effort to get a GS-11 position in Hawaii than it is to be a mid level employee at Sun, etc. All I am saying is that if you are local and want a high paying, low stress tech job, you can focus and succeed at getting a government related tech job in Hawaii.


What I disagree with is the belief that the talent is here, just waiting to get a chance. I do think Hawaii has some technical talent but I see two specific issues:

- the talent is fairly limited (which is the premise of Dan's opening post)
- we lack talent in building startups

Let me give 2 examples:

When I worked in SF, our 50 person startup had the equivalent of a Hawaii all-start team. The academic and work credentials, along with the level of expertise was extraordinarily high. Someone like Dan would easily excel there but a lot of local techs would have trouble because of a lack of experience/training at that level.

For example, I used to go to the Ruby meetup in Berkeley and every meeting had 30 guys who were really advanced programmers. That's just Berkeley and just for Ruby, there were others in Novato, SF, San Jose, etc. While Hawaii has a number of people with similar skills, it's nowhere near that quantity of people.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even programmers who never worked in business/marketing positions tended to be quite sophisticated on startup economics and business plans. Excelling at corporate/government technology positions is much different than tech startups. This is a key weakness we have that cannot be simply overcome with changing perceptions or providing government money.

Comment by Daniel Leuck on December 27, 2008 at 2:45pm

I suspect most hi-tech start-ups isn't far behind and might pay even less with little health and retirement benefits. Perhaps some start-up CEOs on here can provide a bit of insight?

When comparing compensation packages you really need to specify where on the mainland. A Java Developer in San Francisco makes considerably more than she would in Des Moines. We pay salaries and contractor rates that are better than most cities on the mainland of comparable size. For the top contractors we pay the same rates we would in NY or SF. For web start-ups where the employees have substantial equity the cash portion of the compensation package is obviously lower than average, but this is true anywhere. We have several start-ups as customers. I can't give names, but their top guys comp packages are competitive with startups in the valley and east coast. Sometimes you can go a bit lower because of the "living in paradise" factor, but in the end you are competing with offers from mainland companies.

Comment by John on December 27, 2008 at 1:37pm

I think that would be even better.

By the way, this suggestion is a variant of an Obama proposed policy to give $3,000 tax credit for each new job created. If Obama does advocate that in 2009, pushing such a proposal for the tech sector could be a nice way to leverage national momentum and attention.

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