
Attracting Tech Talent: Start with Culture Redesign - jingwen
https://www.csc.gov.sg/articles/attracting-tech-talent-start-with-culture-redesign
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mdorazio
Alternate view coming from consulting with large traditional companies for
many years:

Three things you need to attract tech talent:

1) Pay more money. Not willing or able to pay more? Then you don't actually
want tech talent, you want tech _labor_. This is far and away the #1 issue
holding back every city, BigCo, and startup that complains about not being
able to attract tech talent, to the point where every time someone says they
just can't find people, you should ask how much they're offering and then end
the conversation when they inevitably give you some ridiculously low number.

2) The exception to #1 is... offer work on _things people actually care
about_. Know why highly qualified engineers trip over themselves to work at
SpaceX despite the awful working conditions? Because they actually care about
advancing the state of human spaceflight. Your MarTech / FinTech / niche SaaS
whatever metoo bullshit company is not compelling to people who are positioned
to be able to work on things they actually care about.

3) Remove the red tape. Kill the HR hiring circus shenanigans. Kill the stupid
performance metrics. (In the case of Singapore) Kill the barriers to immigrate
as a tech worker. Kill the dozen layers of management and twelve meetings to
actually accomplish anything precedent in big companies and government
organizations. Etc. Tech Talent wants to _get shit done_ , not talk about
getting shit done while waiting for three separate sign-offs to even get
started.

The other things mentioned in this article are nice, but are generally tier 2
considerations when you dig into what people _actually_ want vs. talk about
wanting.

