Austin Technology Council, along with Austin’s technology leaders, made a commitment at a May 2011 CEO summit, to take the best of our city live to the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas to recruit top technology talent.  Today, the Austin Technology Council proudly announces two Top Talent events in San Francisco and Sunnyvale, the evenings of September 13 and 14.  Over 30 Austin area technology CEOs will represent their companies live, talk with candidates, and ideally fill some of the many technology jobs currently open.

“These events are about Austin making a pretty loud statement in the Bay Area,” said Julie Huls, president, Austin Technology Council.  “Texas is a New Economy State, and we have a killer combination to support it: high-paying tech jobs, fast-growing companies, a low cost of living, and a relaxed way of life.  Over 100 of our area CEOs were together in May at an ATC CEO Summit and one key call to action was to bring more tech talent to Austin.  We are proud to deliver on that idea in a couple weeks in San Francisco and Sunnyvale.”

Texas overall, and Austin specifically, are among few geographies currently adding jobs, and Austin’s technology industry particularly has many job opportunities for programmers, developers, coders and engineers.  The Austin technology community continues to thrive with new start ups and fast growing mid-stage companies.  The city attracts entrepreneurs and business leaders who want to start and grow their businesses in Austin.  But there are not enough technical resources to build out the solutions these companies envision, and commercialize products.

In a recent survey of Austin area technology CEOs, 71% of respondents stated there is a shortage of technically skilled talent at the present time in Austin.  And more than 50% believe these talent issues have limited their organization’s productivity and efficiency.  Of respondent’s plans for 2011 and 2012, the number one ranked activity was adding jobs.

Austin currently has several dozen technology companies hiring 40 or more new programmers each.  Of over 30 CEOs representing their companies at the Top Talent Roadshow, current job openings include roles like: Data Engineer, Front End Software Engineer, Information Architect, UX Designer.

At present, companies confirmed for the events include: Affinegy, Bancvue, Bazaarvoice, CacheIQ, Catapult, Calxeda, Collider Media, Creditcards.com, Gazzang, Gowalla, Homeaway, Ihiji, Less Networks, Mutual Mobile, Phunware, Ravel, SailPoint, Spredfast, Vast and Whaleshark.

“In Austin, we’ve fallen into a trap of fighting over existing talent, especially in engineering, programming and software development roles,” said Rod Favaron, serial Austin entrepreneur, and presently CEO of Spredfast, a white-hot social CRM company.  This leadership role follows Favaron taking his previous company, Lombardi, through successful acquisition by IBM.

“We will not realize Austin’s fullest technology innovation potential until we infuse new talent into this city,” added Favaron.  “The zero-sum-game hurts the overall tech community.  So we’ve decided to come together to seek out new additions to Austin to help us all grow.  Fortunately, it doesn’t require a lot of convincing.  But we do think it requires the technology leaders of Austin representing the city, its value, our businesses directly to draw in the next generation.”

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