More Money for Developers

With the economy recovering and new ideas floating around there is plenty more money for developers and programmers. Venture capital is flowing and everyone is looking for someone to implement their latest "Web 2.0" project. With all this new money and ideas, conditions still aren't that good for a lot of developers especially those in larger companies where corporate overhead still manages to bring the everyday coder down.

Ultimately, it comes down to how developers are managed and retained in companies. If companies truly want to get ahead, they need to retain top developers to implement their technology solutions they so desperately rely on today and in the future. An article written by Eric Schmidt from June 1999 on Fast Company called "How to Manage Geeks" seems to ring true today as it did over six years ago. This was just on the eve of the dot-com craze and it has similar implications today. The classic quote that sums up what it's really about for developers:

If you don't want to lose your geeks, you have to find a way to give them promotions without turning them into managers. Most of them are not going to make very good executives -- and, in fact, most of them would probably turn out to be terrible managers. But you need to give them a forward career path, you need to give them recognition, and you need to give them more money.