Mobile App Talent Pool Is Shallow
Companies Scramble for Engineers Who Can Write Software for Smartphones — This year, magazine publisher Hearst Corp. intends to add five software engineers to its mobile development staff. Social-networking company Ning Inc. plans to nearly double its mobile development team.
Context & Ripple Effects
The shortage has been building in plain sight: the 2009 land grab for space on phones created demand that by October 2010 Business Week was already calling a full-blown dearth of mobile-software developers, and by January 2011 even Google — the best-equipped recruiter in the market — was hunting for mobile-app experts. Today's WSJ piece marks the point where the squeeze spreads beyond tech companies to traditional media and consumer web firms.
What makes this round different is who is hiring: Hearst Corp., a magazine publisher, wants five mobile engineers this year, and Ning plans to nearly double its mobile development team. When publishers and social platforms start competing directly with Apple, Google and startups for the same small pool of smartphone engineers, compensation and recruiting tactics across the whole market come under pressure.
First-order effects
- Hearst's plan to add five engineers and Ning's plan to nearly double its mobile team put both firms into direct bidding competition with tech companies that have deeper engineering brands and richer equity packages.
Second-order effects
- Established tech employers like Google, already searching for mobile-app experts since January 2011, face rising salary demands as non-tech entrants bid up a pool everyone agrees is shallow.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mobile engineering becomes a durable talent moat: companies that cannot attract smartphone developers will buy agencies or outsource, reshaping how media and consumer-web firms build software internally.
The trend: Smartphone app development is turning scarce engineering talent into a competitive moat, pulling even legacy publishers into the same hiring war as platform giants.