Outside of mercenaries and pro athletes, few professionals vote with their feet as much as members of the IT community. Getting them can be hard enough, and then the question becomes, how do you keep them?
A recent editorial in the Toronto Star blamed the brain drain on the salary inequity between the United States and Canada. For two recent engineering graduates working at Nortel Networks, the Canadian job pays $49,000 while the U.S. job pays US$53,000.
Is everything as simple as this? Closer examination reveals that getting and keeping employees is not all about money. Rather, it’s a multitude of factors that make employees want to stay.
IBM Corp., like Nortel, has to compete for graduates with its southern corporate brethren. If salary was the only issue, IBM Canada would see a dearth of qualified candidates to fill its thousands of positions. But that is not the case.
“I have no problem attracting skill in Canada. You are talking to an organization that attracts 60,000 r