Planet Analog March 04 Column
It has been a couple months since my last column and time to update the Analog Community of the state of the Job Scene.
I have fielded numerous questions from the community on whether jobs are being transferred overseas to countries like India and the Far East. We have seen a few companies like TI looking to staff analog and mixed signal designers in their current design centers abroad. I would not conclude from this that there is any kind of trend. The US is still the primary home for seasoned talent in the analog field and I don’t see this changing anytime in the foreseeable future!
Overall the market for talent is quite good this year and I think we will see it continue for the remainder of the year. The Hot areas right now are Data Conversion, RF, and Power Management. The UWB arena appears to continue to forge ahead despite the lack of agreement on the standards. We have continued to see both new and existing clients call in to seek help in luring seasoned analog talent in engineering, marketing, applications engineering and test engineering.
On the Executive front there have been a number of firms that have made changes to their Executive Teams to enhance their ability to achieve their corporate goals. A good number of recruiters we have relationships with have been very busy and the same applies for us at Analog Solutions and CareerAnalog. The market has begun a shift back to a candidate driven market which is causing some companies headaches. We have seen a number of companies struggling to make compelling offers. Candidates are demanding financial incentives to change jobs and many active job seekers are again seeing multiple offers. Candidates who resign suddenly from their current employers are seeing increased pressure to reverse their decisions. Employers are routinely making counter-offers involving financial incentives as well as changes in responsibility to attempt to stem the exodus of their talented people. Most candidates can see the pitfalls of accepting counter-offers in the long term and are continuing with their decisions to move on to new and exciting opportunities.
We have noticed that some larger public companies are putting a time frame on current requisitions. We have seen a number of them temporarily freeze hiring if hiring managers don’t fill the needs quickly enough. This has become a solid challenge for hiring managers as hiring key people is a time consuming process. Hiring Freezes still are one way quick way to lower expenses. I presume most of this is to control spending near the close of their current quarters to protect the quarterly numbers so as to meet or exceed analyst’s expectations. Q-1’s numbers appear to be decent and as usual we would expect Q-2 to show growth which should justify the current valuations. We should also see increased visibility and a strong, typical Q-3. Layoffs have dwindled to a trickle and we see this as another very positive trend. It appears that the competitive race is on to get ahead of the competition and develop more new products.
Funding has improved for the solid startups as VC’s have continued to gain confidence in
It has been a couple months since my last column and time to update the Analog Community of the state of the Job Scene.
I have fielded numerous questions from the community on whether jobs are being transferred overseas to countries like India and the Far East. We have seen a few companies like TI looking to staff analog and mixed signal designers in their current design centers abroad. I would not conclude from this that there is any kind of trend. The US is still the primary home for seasoned talent in the analog field and I don’t see this changing anytime in the foreseeable future!
Overall the market for talent is quite good this year and I think we will see it continue for the remainder of the year. The Hot areas right now are Data Conversion, RF, and Power Management. The UWB arena appears to continue to forge ahead despite the lack of agreement on the standards. We have continued to see both new and existing clients call in to seek help in luring seasoned analog talent in engineering, marketing, applications engineering and test engineering.
On the Executive front there have been a number of firms that have made changes to their Executive Teams to enhance their ability to achieve their corporate goals. A good number of recruiters we have relationships with have been very busy and the same applies for us at Analog Solutions and CareerAnalog. The market has begun a shift back to a candidate driven market which is causing some companies headaches. We have seen a number of companies struggling to make compelling offers. Candidates are demanding financial incentives to change jobs and many active job seekers are again seeing multiple offers. Candidates who resign suddenly from their current employers are seeing increased pressure to reverse their decisions. Employers are routinely making counter-offers involving financial incentives as well as changes in responsibility to attempt to stem the exodus of their talented people. Most candidates can see the pitfalls of accepting counter-offers in the long term and are continuing with their decisions to move on to new and exciting opportunities.
We have noticed that some larger public companies are putting a time frame on current requisitions. We have seen a number of them temporarily freeze hiring if hiring managers don’t fill the needs quickly enough. This has become a solid challenge for hiring managers as hiring key people is a time consuming process. Hiring Freezes still are one way quick way to lower expenses. I presume most of this is to control spending near the close of their current quarters to protect the quarterly numbers so as to meet or exceed analyst’s expectations. Q-1’s numbers appear to be decent and as usual we would expect Q-2 to show growth which should justify the current valuations. We should also see increased visibility and a strong, typical Q-3. Layoffs have dwindled to a trickle and we see this as another very positive trend. It appears that the competitive race is on to get ahead of the competition and develop more new products.
Funding has improved for the solid startups as VC’s have continued to gain confidence in
