Tech Employers Ignore Slump

Dozens of technology companies boosted payroll by at least 50% in the past two years

By Heather Perlberg

Hiring in the technology sector is gaining momentum.

Among U.S. technology companies with a market value of more than $100 million, almost 50 increased employment by more than half in the most recently reported two-year period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Some small and mid-size businesses boosted payrolls by almost fivefold, underscoring the resilient demand for Internet services, software and electronics.

Rohit Dhingra is one face behind the statistics. He went to Columbia Business School in New York so he could land a consulting job. Instead, he got hired by a company making computer gear in Silicon Valley.

“A few years back, it just would have been a slam dunk that you want to do investment banking,” Dhingra said. “The future of financial services does not seem as bright.”

Dhingra is joining thousands of workers who have switched to technology careers during the economic slump, lured by an industry that kept hiring while other businesses cut jobs or forced current employees to take heavier burdens.

While the broader unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent in December, reaching a three-year low, few companies outside of technology have as voracious an appetite for workers. In the software and services industry, 74 companies with more than $100 million in market value expanded their workforce by at least 10 percent. That was more than any other industry group measured by Bloomberg.

Apple Inc., Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. were among the companies that increased their workforce by at least 50 percent in the past two years, Bloomberg’s data showed. The growth has prompted Silicon Valley companies to consider more people from nontechnical backgrounds and ramp up recruitment everywhere from Wall Street to Seattle. Workers who would have shied away from the volatility of 1990s-era startups are seeing the technology industry as a haven of stability.

Web.com Group Inc., a Jacksonville, Florida-based provider of website services to small businesses, grew the most on the list in percentage terms. It has 1,148 employees, according to its most recent annual report, a 380 percent gain from two years earlier.

Silicon Graphics International Inc. ranked second, increasing its employment 372 percent to 1,500, followed by Kit Digital Inc. at 319 percent and Riverbed Technology Inc. at 208 percent. Apple, which started with a larger employee base, grew 76 percent. That amounted to 26,100 new jobs.

At Riverbed, an in-house recruiting team of 20 people scours the country for new hires.

“We operate it like a search firm,” said Mike Guerchon, senior vice president of employee services at the San Francisco-based network-equipment company. “It’s a tough battlefield for talent all the time.”

The appetite for employees isn’t showing signs of waning. Amazon and Facebook Inc. each plan to add thousands of jobs in 2012, many in new satellite offices. EBay Inc. and Tibco Software Inc. also are stepping up their recruiting.

“We are hiring quite rapidly now, all in sales and service,” Tibco Chief Executive Officer Vivek Ranadive said last week at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s a good time to hire.”

Some employers are concerned that the hiring spree resembles the go-go days of the dot-com bubble. When technology stocks crashed in 2000, thousands of jobs vanished. Silicon Valley lost more than 85,000 positions between 2001 and 2008, and the other technology hotbeds suffered similar losses.

“After some real dark days, there’s a lot of excitement and innovation happening again, but as a guy who has been through Bubble 1.0, I can’t help but see a lot of similarities,” said Stuart MacDonald, chief marketing and revenue officer at Freshbooks.com, a maker of online business software in Toronto. “I can’t help but think I’ve seen this movie before.”