If any city should be able to offer the IT community shelter from the storm of bad economic news, it's Austin, one of the top five technology centers in the U.S. and the place where the world's fastest supercomputer was unveiled - at the University of Texas’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) - just six months ago. Around that same time, Forbes magazine declared Austin to be the fastest growing large metropolitan area in the nation, with projected economic growth totaling 32 percent by 2012.
One interesting trend in Austin is a new focus on software and social networking, something of a change for a city known for hardware and chip heavyweights such as Dell, IBM, and AMD. In April, venture capital firm Austin Ventures put up $50 million to build an Austin-based corporate social networking software and services company. General Partner Chris Pacitti told the Austin American-Statesman, "We see that as a huge opportunity."
The bloggers at Austin 3.0, a site dedicated to tracking the city's technology vibe, agree. "For now, the city remains dormant, hidden under what we call the 'old technology veil'…But, as we write this, under this veil, there are rumblings of something greater on the horizon."
Those rumblings include "residual effects" of the annual SXSW conference, which attracts thousands of bright young thinkers to the city; new social networks such as Start-Up District to encourage collaborations; and an acknowledgment that the city can no longer depend on traditional box and processor manufacturing for the majority of its tech jobs. In a burst of civic pride, the blog declares, "This new generation of geeks bring to the table an incredible enthusiasm and passion for Austin. They pursue their dreams in hopes to better the city - not solely for fame or money. It may seem idealistic, but we challenge you to ask the question: 'Why Austin?' And, surely you will be met with nothing less than an enthusiastic; 'Why not? I love this place. It’s a small city with big city dreams.'"
In the 2008 Cybercities survey conducted by AeA (which actually reflects 2006 data, the latest available) Austin does still look like a traditional tech powerhouse, with 68,800 high-tech workers (12 percent of the workforce), an average wage of $100,500 (third ranked in the nation), and a total of 2,700 high-tech businesses in the city. "Austin's growth in the high-tech industry has been positive for the local economy," says AeA Texas Council Chairperson Douglas Bartek. "Austin ranked eighth in the nation in high-tech employment concentration - a figure even more impressive when you consider that our high-tech jobs pay more than double the area's private sector wage. The recent growth is affirmation that Austin plays a vital role in America's high-tech industry and continues to move in the right direction."
More generally, Austin-area employers have been hiring at a healthy pace during the third quarter of 2008, according to the quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which covers all industries, not just tech. From July to September, 33 percent of the companies interviewed planned to hire more employees. That's down from the second quarter but about even with the same period in 2007.
"We haven't seen much of a decrease in the hiring needs of our clients, and they continue to need very qualified resources," says Kara Miller, Branch Manager of IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies' office in the city. In addition to seeking skills in Ruby and Python, "we also continue to see a need for experts in Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/PERL, the latest version of .NET, and software testing," she says.
One note: "More and more of our clients want to hire IT talent in a contract role at first to give themselves and the worker time to figure out if the company is the right fit for them," Miller reports.
Like the bloggers at Austin 3.0, Miller sees "more and more start-ups popping up in Austin as well as an influx of talent relocating here from parts of the country." With so much going on, Austin certainly appears to have more IT energy than many other locales that are suffering more obviously during this year's downturn.
Austin job postings on Dice have dipped since early 2008 |
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