Earlier this week, I had the chance to catch up with a hr friend of mine over a couple of beers. We caught up on jobs in the DC region, family, and challenges with filling positions for his clients.
We spoke in depth about the Mid-Atlantic region and the demand for engineers and I ignorantly thought that the demand had decreased a little more due to what I thought was a huge flow of engineers to the area over the last couple of years. The DC area is a hot destination for engineers. (always has been with the government but we are starting to see more engineers come to DC for other industries) Did you know Bethesda, right outside of DC, has the highest average STEM salary in the country, beating the likes of Boston and Silicon Valley? (Check out the article on that here)…I digress once again.
Long story short, we concluded that there’s still a high demand for engineers in the market but its not for the reasons you’d think. Most engineering jobs are for A engineers but there are only so many A engineers in the market. There are a ton of B and C engineers but most companies don’t have the capacity to mold and develop engineers which probably would be cheaper than throwing an absorbent amount of money at an A engineer.
Most companies that are successful in the early stages do so by developing talent and skill of their B and C players. A teams are too expensive to assemble and too difficult to scale.
Moral of the story: Developing talent is as important as developing product or services….Might be more important… It’s one of the best ways to ensure the sustainability of your company.