When executive assistant Laurie Asher insisted she’d have to work from 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to beat the rush-hour traffic, her new employer Science Applications International Corp., bent the rules. Ken Wechsler, who hired Asher, said he frequently telecommutes from home to escape traffic or spend time with family. Flexible hours and telecommuting are among some concessions employers are willing to make in today’s tight labor markets. In the technology-related businesses where talented and qualified people are in scarce supply, some firms are offering more perks to satisfy the employees they have and draw others. San Diego-based SAIC, which prides itself in being the largest employee-owned research and engineering firm in the nation, presently has 2,000 openings , mostly for tech jobs in Washington, D.C., and San Diego. “There just aren’t enough college graduates and high school graduates to keep up with the demand,” Wechsler said.
– Competition Is Close To Home
Adding to Wechsler’s predicament is the proximity of the four high-tech megaplayers , Ericsson, Qualcomm Inc., Nokia and Gateway , just a few miles away. They, too, are having problems finding top talent , everybody in the high-tech industry does, Wechsler said. Last year, SAIC had significant turnover, up 20 percent from 1998, he said, adding that this was “well below the market.” So when a good candidate comes along like Asher, it’s worth giving her a bit of leeway, Wechsler said. Asher, a newlywed who likes to be home in time to cook dinner for her husband, vowed she’ll be a better employee for it. “If he’s (Wechsler) is willing to make concessions for me, then I am willing to make concessions for the company and do work at home (in the evenings),” she said.
– Families Matter To Tech Employer
To satisfy more employees, SAIC recently introduced a plan to assist with adoptions, elderly care and pre-retirement planning. SAIC also raised its combined leave of absence and sick days from 14 days in 1998 to between 16 and 24 days in mid-1998. In addition, the firm reimburses workers up to $4,000 a year in college tuition for taking work-related classes. By contrast, other technology-related firms in town see little reason to offer more than they already do.
Among them is Qualcomm. “We haven’t really changed anything within the last year,” said Qualcomm spokeswoman Diana Baldwin. That is aside from the firm’s ongoing hunt for bright people at universities and institutions in the United States and elsewhere.
– Local Firms Put More On The Table
Susan Major, vice president for the consulting firm A.T. Kearney in La Jolla, said high-tech firms in Silicon Valley are still one step ahead of their smaller San Diego counterparts. Besides offering candidates the usual great stock options, sign-on bonuses and down payments on a home, extra perks such as forgivable loans are often seen as part of the deal, she said. “The good news is San Diego is starting to catch up,” she said. San Diego’s other technology sector , the 250 private and public life-sciences firms , is also feeling the squeeze from the tight labor market. Highly educated chemists are especially hard to find, said Joseph Panetta, president and CEO of Biocom, the local industry association for life sciences firms. Biotech, like its high-tech counterpart, is faced with a lack of scientific minds.
– Biotechs Can’t Offer Extra Perks
– Biotechs Can’t Offer Extra Perks
Out of San Diego’s total 28,000 biotech workers, between 7 percent and 10 percent are foreigners working on temporary visas, Panetta said. Most of San Diego’s start-ups also don’t have the financial clout to offer workers glitzy benefits and extra perks, said Pat Lowenstam, president of the Biotech Employee Development Coalition, a San Diego-based not-for-profit group of biotech human resources managers. “Most of us don’t make money, so we don’t have a lot of extraordinary benefits to provide,” Lowenstam said. “None of us is in the position to offer something that is truly unheard of.” Added Panetta, the large health care firms , like Novartis’ two research institutes, Johnson & Johnson Co., and Dow AgroSciences ,have the deep pockets to offer creative perks. Scientists need to assess whether they want to forfeit pay for working in biotech’s challenging, cutting-edge, progressive environment, Panetta said.
Miriam Rothman, professor of human resource management at the University of San Diego, said younger people don’t mind a smaller paycheck if they receive stock options.
– Start-Ups Offer Stock Options
“The number of young people in their 20s is smaller right now, so start-up companies offer stock options , that’s attractive to the young people,” Rothman said. “If they work for a couple of years at $35,000 and the company doesn’t go anywhere, they had an interesting experience (and move on).” Sadly, she said, in the new economy it’s youth, not experience, that rules. “America is in love with youth , business in particular,” she said. It’s no accident that technology-driven firms offer workers flexibility, a casual environment, opportunity for growth and development, challenging work and a less hierarchical structure than old economy firms, Rothman said. It’s what young people want.
But in some of the old industries, money still matters. The recent “salary war” among law firms in an effort to lure new graduates into their offices proves it. Following the lead of law firms such as Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, San Francisco-based Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison announced in January it will raise first-year salaries for associates to $125,000; second-year salaries to $135,000 and offer bonuses that may make a Brobeck associate richer than peers working elsewhere.
– Graduates Eye Salary Levels
Alexander Lyon, 27, a recent law graduate from Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley who works for Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in San Diego, said students watched closely which firms opted to bump associates’ salaries and which didn’t. “Some firms didn’t follow, others structured their salaries differently where you had the possibility to have the salary (base salary),” he said. Although Lyon said pay wasn’t on top of his list of priorities in choosing his future firm for success, it ranked third. Corporate culture came first, while prestige and client caliber was second on the list of importance.
.
