In the new cyberthriller "Antitrust," recruiters at a mythical software company are so desperate to hire a hotshot programmer that they commission a knockout girlfriend to help woo him.
Although real-world recruiters aren't going quite so far to hire talent, they seem just as desperate to lure programmers in a small but explosive niche of the technology sector: creating software for wireless handheld devices.
Market demand for handhelds has mushroomed and will continue to do so as cellular networks upgrade to third-generation, or 3G, networks, which will allow handheld computers to have always-on online access. At the same time, the market is so new that few people have direct experience writing code for this market in particular.
The extreme imbalance in supply and demand for wireless code writers has headhunters on the lookout, and it has pushed salaries of some wireless programmers beyond the relatively lofty levels of regular software developers.
How lofty? Recruiters say programmers with wireless experience can expect to command a 50 percent salary premium.
"If a director of software programming in the computer industry maybe makes US$100,000, in the wireless industry they're commanding $150,000 but they're also making astronomical figures when it comes to stock," said Steve Wentworth, a recruiter with Active Wireless Executive Search Group. "It's a supply and demand thing. There aren't enough software programmers that have wireless experience out there to fill the jobs."
Darryl Pierce said he started receiving calls from recruiters within 30 minutes of posting his resume on career site Monster.com. Although Pierce had no experience programming for wireless devices, he started work three weeks later at HiddenMind Technology, a company that develops back-end systems for corporate customers to communicate wirelessly with their employees.
"Their initial response was, 'He doesn't have any wireless skills,'" Pierce said of his HiddenMind interviewers. "But after my second interview, they said, 'Keep your cell phone handy.'"
