You'll find this funny. I found it in a magazine (letter to the editor):

Realistic Tech Salaries Would Address Gap

I read your article about finding new tech-savvy employees ("The Talent Gap", Jan. 22). I work with a number of small and medium-size companies, and I believe they often have unreasonable expectations of the talent pool, and what they may have to pay to employ a truly skilled technical person.

They'll tell me they are looking for a sharp, motivated, self-starting software engineer with expertise in Oracle, MySQL, DB2 and an intimate knowledge of all of Cisco's products. The candidtate should have a master's or perferably a Ph.D. in computer science, 15 years' sales experience at a major services firm, be able to write an optimizing compiler (and interpretive scripting language that uses an identical instruction set) in a weekend and have good "people skills."

The first tech they can find with that skill set can claim the $55,000 per year (sorry, no benefits included) job opening that they have.

When American firms wake up and start offering realistic salaries to people in their tech positions, the word will spread, university computer science classes will fill up and the pool of talented technical people will grow.

James Booth
Spectre Systems
Flint, MI