More on Tech Hiring in the Valley

NYT article here, excerpt below:

Then there are salaries. Google is paying computer science majors just out of college $90,000 to $105,000, as much as $20,000 more than it was paying a few months ago. That is so far above the industry average of $80,000 that start-ups cannot match Google salaries. Google declined to comment.

Two executives at a small start-up who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it recently lost an intern when one of the biggest start-ups offered the candidate a 40 percent bump in stock options, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — but only if the candidate accepted the job before hanging up the phone.

“The atmosphere is brutally competitive,” said Keith Rabois, a Silicon Valley veteran and chief operating officer at Square, where Mr. Firestone works. “Recruiting in Silicon Valley is more competitive and intense and furious than college football recruiting of high school athletes.”

Tech recruiters have also expanded their searches. They still scout college campuses, particularly Stanford’s computer science department, where this year it was common for seniors to receive half a dozen offers by the end of first quarter. But since college degrees are not mandatory, recruiters are also going to computer coding competitions and parties, in search of talent that is reminiscent of the dot-com mania.

Colleges rarely teach the newer programming languages like PHP, Ruby and Python, which have become more popular at young Web companies than older ones like Java, he said. Other skills, like working with large amounts of data and analytics, can be acquired only at a few companies.

“There are few programs that actually teach those things, and yet that’s the primary people we hire,” Mr. Lee said.