EXPO has jobs and NYC has talent

With all the debate about whether NYC has become a city competitive for tech startups, one of the indicators we could look toward would be how fast digital jobs in the area get filled.

Two years ago, we would gladly pay a headhunter outrageous fees to find us a low level developer. But the competition wasn’t from other tech startups. It was from the conglomerates and banks that were paying premium rates for tech folks, pricing startups out of the market for dev talent. Nowadays, things are different.

We’ve got 4, soon to be 5-6 job specs out there, and we’re getting great response. High quality, deep experience, and entrepreneurial attitudes. My opinion is that this type of demand isn’t an indication of an already robust startup city, but rather will be the cause of one. With AOL layoffs and other media companies hitting the skids in 2009, tech talent is out there, conspiring, networking, searching. They’re realizing that the cushy job security they thought they had by taking the clock-punching jobs at big companies wasn’t actually that secure. So, the benefits of joining a small company — launching exciting new products, garnering larger responsibility, EQUITY — are becoming more attractive, more valuable in the career assessment process.

I’m predicting that some spurts of growth occur in NY from the talented seeds that the big companies are dropping all over the City. Existing high-growth companies and new ones springing up will be able to surge forward faster than anticipated with access to the exciting new talent in 2010.