As we have been discussing recently, advancements in local capital, acquisitions, and funded companies are driving the tech ecosystem momentum in San Diego. Another ingredient is the availability and access to relevant talent.
San Diego has a large tech workforce, highlighted in the 2016 Software Study by the EDC & Michael Combs including over 40,000 software-related jobs.
UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering is the largest engineering school on the west coast by enrollment and ranked 8th in the country by US News.
Our three coding schools, Origin, LEARN, and UCSD Extension and upcoming B2B Sales boot camp are supplying and up skilling our professional talent.
Our talent is engaged and passionate about our culture-driven companies with one of the lowest turnover rates in the country.
Our companies are hiring by the dozens including developers, marketers, and salespeople. Get in touch if you want to get in touch with a company in SD.
But we also have some challenges to overcome like our salaries for tech workers in San Diego which have been flat for three years as shown by recent data from Hired.com.
It is sometimes hard to compete on salary with other growing tech ecosystems with our high cost of living but LA’s equally high cost of living disproves this as a stand alone indicator.
We are also missing out on the experienced talent that wants to relocate here but instead are getting recruited to LA, Austin, and Seattle for higher-paying jobs.
Also LA is overtaking SD for the pure number of life science jobs. While biotech funding is still higher in San Diego we will lose talent especially if our salaries remain low.
These are easy areas of opportunity for the region to capitalize on. It is not a hard sell to attract talent to San Diego but talent needs to know about the larger opportunities and the number of companies in the region that are hiring.
Hiring managers also need to want to hire the best and sometimes that means relocating/importing the best. We have to be open-minded to this. A relocation package is a small fee compared to the benefit of bringing in game-changing talent.
The San Diego EDC & San Diego Venture Group have been hard at work creating tools and events to get the word out with their SD Life Changing campaign and the Tacos & Tech event last year where 40 companies went to Mountain View to recruit over 1,000 engineers to San Diego. These tools enable companies to help sell and market the region to interested candidates.
Join the movement and share this with your network that San Diego is hiring the best talent and building world-class companies.
If you are looking to move here, get in touch and we are happy to connect you to those who have already moved here for reinforcement!
Your SDTech Ambassador,
P.S. Send me anonymous feedback by texting ‘nealbloom’ to 24365 thanks to Rally Corp’s Text-2-Comment tool.
