Get the latest tech news

Tech firms were fighting a war for talent. Now they are waging war on talent

In the years immediately following the dot-com meltdown, there was more tech labor than there were tech jobs. That didn’t last long. By 20...

Other labor policy changes - return to office mandates, contraction of fringe benefits, reduction of job promotions, suspension of bonuses and comp freezes - encourage more people to exit voluntarily. Because it couldn’t compete with outsized comp packages, small tech relied on intangible factors, such as flexible role definitions and strong, unique corporate cultures. The latter meant that by aggressively incubating well defined corporate norms and values, a smaller tech firm could position itself as a “destination employer” and compete for the strata of people it most wanted to hire.

Get the Android app