In the local Sunday paper last week (Burlington Free Press) there was an article on the state of the software industry in Vermont called "Tech's Problems and Potential". As a board member of the Vermont Software Developer Alliance I am familiar with this on a scale that goes beyond my personal experience, but the article garnered the perspective of business owners that was new to me.
Li'l old Vermont rode the Dot Com wave just like any other area. Burlington is a very hip city and with it's proximity to the great outdoors (skiing, hiking and the 120 mile long lake Champlain) is a hot spot for people who can work from anywhere. Burlington also has great infrastructure. And this in't limited to Burlington. Though I live 30 miles southeast of Burlington and have high speed DSL at my mountainside house, I still like to joke that "yes, we even have flush toilets".
When the Dot Com bubble burst, we felt it just as badly as anyone else did.
But like elsewhere, the software industry is on the rebound. What astonished me about the article was that the business owners interviewed were complaining (very politely) about the difficulty of finding enough technical people in the area to support the growth they are currently experiencing.
According to a survey that VTSDA had done by some UVM students this spring, of the 70 software companies (from independents to consulting firms to companies who write vertical market software), there was an expectation of more than doubling the number of current employees in the next three years. You didn't glaze over that, I hope. SEVENTY companies responded and there were plenty that didn't!
That is pretty amazing. But the problem is where are these employees going to come from.
I firmly believe that knowing these jobs are here (but they need to be challenging and good paying jobs!) can encourage IT people to make the move to Vermont. Especially those who pine for the outdoor lifestyle. Places like Burton Snowboards (not a software company, but a company with a good sized I.T. and development staff) have ski passes as part of their benefits. I saw an ad for Timberline Interactive in Middlebury that specified "Love of dark chocolate and interest in bicycling and/or fencing a plus!. (See their jobs here)
While there is an impressive array of software talent in Vermont (partially demonstrated in the well-attended local user groups - .NET, SQL Server, Oracle, Flash and Linux), it's not enough to fill the potential shoes laid out by the growth forecasts of many companies in the area. The obvious way is to let the allure of the Vermont life style attract more developers to the area. A not-so-obvious, but oh-so-healthy-for-Vermont way is to train Vermonters in I.T. Both of these paths are critical.
With respect to the latter, we see a lot of this in the need for the Vermont Technical College to grow as rapidly as it has been in the past few yeas. Vermont Tech students are locals, as opposed to the students at the very high tech Champlain College. And they are learning current marketable stuff. My friend Mike Soulia teaches there and he bases one of his .NET classes on Rocky Lhotka's CSLA!
So we are seeing more and more local Vermonters getting interest in and access to training. One of the co-chairs of VTSDA works for a company that does specialized tech training to help businesses grow. Sometimes it is directly for a business, for example, Dealer.com, who needed to grow and wanted to stay in Vermont. Rather than trying to get developer to move to Vermont, they hired Vermont HiTec to train web developers for them. Vermont HITEC has also done state funded training to create skilled tech workers for specific industries.
The downside to this is that this only fills a particular niche. Most companies are looking for experienced developers who can walk into a job and roll up their sleeves. That is where the lucky developers who are sick of the big city come into play.
I list as many Vermont IT jobs as I am aware of in the Jobs category of my other blog. But I certainly don't keep up. I had one company, desperate for a C++ programmer recently ask me to republish a listing they originally sent me in April. Another favorite software company keeps growing and growing and I have written so many posts in my other blog about what a great company they are, hoping to help them find new talent. There are a number of firms that handle Vermont IT job placement. Among them are Technical Connection and VTJobs.com.
I'm very excited about the prospect of Vermont's Software industry expanding. It's the perfect type of business for Vermont because it is a clean business (as opposed to most manufacturing) and it often brings in dollars from out of state that are spent in Vermont. And of course, as many of my tech friends know, I'm just trying to get all of my friends to move to Vermont!
The talent pool here is of high quality, but not high enough quantity.