I wonder if keeping techies isn't a lot like looking for a life-mate (as opposed to intimate partner for wild frolicking). That is, start by looking for character.

If you look for a 'hottie', someone skilled in attracting partners, the day after the commitment you wake up next to .. someone with 'attract partner' life skills. What does that imply about the relationship? Skills, earned through intense effort, are *not* casually set aside.

Similar, the candidate most skilled at interviewing, advancing by moving to new employers, will *not* be around for long. Their 'pick a time to leave, and find a nice place to go' life skills will kick in, regardless of the environment.

I had an interview at a company, where the manager I interviewed with and later worked for intended to organize a group of programmers. The problem was that although the manager was sincere, management at the company never had interest in anything related to changing the organization. I joined the company for other reasons, but that deceptive statement still seems relevant to the entire 3 1/2 years I spent there. The deception was the manager misrepresenting the role I would play, selling his own agenda rather than sticking strictly to what was true at the company at the time.

How to keep techies? I would select staff based on character such as integrity, courtesy, and respect for self and others. I would have serious reservations about the candidates that interview the best - they are putting effort into life skills related to changing jobs, not serving others. And I would be careful how I represent the library - show strict respect, courtesy, and honesty about the organization and the position. Don't oversell - that is disrespectful. 'Brutally honest' is also disrespectful, and a form of deceit. Be courteous to the applicant, be courteous in how you describe the people that would be involved with the applicant's position.

Organizations operate as they do. To keep tech staff, perhaps review, regularly, how management relates to the organization. Courtesy, honesty, and respect *can* apply to technical matters, as well as to sponsors and customers. I think some of what you mention in your list is going to happen anywhere, at some time, and won't affect most tech staff. A pattern, though, shows disrespect for the work done as well as the employees. And disrespect does not deserve loyalty, or dedication.

Not everyone goes into programming or even web design to make piles of money. Some of us just look for a useful place to serve. Sell the position to someone looking to balance their life, and you have a good shot at holding onto them long term. And long term relationships are worth having. Communications get easier, expectations come closer to reality, and the better your tech staff knows their work and their organization, the more likely they will contribute beyond their assignments, with suggestions, recommendations, and ideas.

Sell the library as a place librarians hang out. Many people have good relationships with librarians through their lives, and working with librarians should seem to be a reward for many of us. Libraries usually work regular hours, allowing for (mostly) dependable time for family and outside interests. The work may have privacy or security aspects, but much of the work can be taken home for additional contemplation, problem solving, or embellishment if desired. You don't want to lose control of projects, nor depend on outside 'free' time to get work done, but allowing the techie to work as she/he feels the need is .. courteous. And libraries tend to be stable organizations. That stability might look stagnant to some, but secure to others.

Pick the right tech staff, and watch them grow. And if you aren't sold that tech staff should need to stay techies for the library long term, allow for growth, for interests to pull techies from tech staff to .. microforms or other skills. Keep continuing education opportunities prominent, both technical and cross-crafting.

Respect, trust. Maybe not the most exciting single date, but very satisfying. And replace worry about whether there will be another date with the expectation that the next one will be even better.

Brad is right in so many ways about finding and retaining talent for the library systems office. Over the last ten years I have hired, trained, and lost so many good students who came to us with talent and character which we developed (ok, exploited) to our mutual benefit. If only we could have kept some of them on, we could have brought the library to the very best of libraries. Yet too often they graduated and were lost to us. School and union constraints made it impossible to extend any sort of employment offer to the same people we had relied on just a month before their graduation.

One idea my colleagues and I have wished could come true would be a post (under)grad program that allowed us to give our best and brightest kids a chance to stay on at the school for a two or, at most three, years. Cover their benefits, including graduate support, but allow these kids to work for us, in the library, in the network center, in the server farm, in programmers cubes - wherever there is a need. But make the program conditional that there is no long term commitment to the employee after the end of the program. That shoudl relieve the unions and the administration of position creep. The new vacancy would be open to the next crop of new grads. The benefits to the library would be obvious as we could train students with at least the possibility that good work would be rewarded with a recommendation for this program. For the student it would give some realism to their student work-study duties and also give them a chance to go through a hiring process for their first job.

Over the years our systems office has 'graduated' so many talented people who do very well out there in the market place. They often find themselves overly prepared for their first job and go onto more education and better jobs. That happens because we do hire for character, are loyal to them through their student times, forgive them their mistakes, teach them how to do it better next time, and give their potential employers true balanced strong references. Why are we giving away our best talent so easily?

But now you got me going so I will stop. Great posting.

Brad and John, I appreciate your thoughtful comments. I love the idea of providing a post-grad program for talented students. There are fellowships of this type for librarians. Why not for techies?

In my library, sometimes we've gotten lucky in that IT positions have come open when our student assistants - who we have trained and nurtured - are graduating. We've hired some of these people and have benefitted greatly from them. The problem is, we aren't good at keeping them. When libraries are lucky enough to hire talent, they need to earn the loyalty of these employees. There are many ways to do this and I've seen failure in this respect. And it's a pity.

Laura,
So there are the two sides of it. How does the institution open itself to keeping the best and brightest balanced with what is it going to take to keep these same people around. In other words, even if there were positions, would the right people apply.

I guess the third component is the kind of library you are hiring for. If you have an environment which is always got something going on back in the shop, something cool to release next semester or next fall, then you will always be attracting the best people to be involved. If they face just another year of fixing broken hard drives or doing updates the old fashioned way, well, then you won't keep them longer than they have to stay before looking elsewhere.

John, This is true. We've also been in the situation in which we've had too much on our plate and have burned out our best and brightest. Part of a supportive environment is a careful calibration of priorities, as well as a commitment to hiring adequate staff. Failures in these areas can lead to a vicious cycle: good staff will leave, creating pent-up needs that fall to the next batch of too-few staff.

Having been in the dotcom world, however briefly, prior to grad school, I have to weigh in here. I can tell you we have one very important bargaining chip that the private sector usually doesn't.

Time.

Even with wages on the way down, there's no way the library world can pay our young programmers and Web staff what they'd make at HugeCorporation.com. But I can tell you, a lot of techies are getting tired of having to put in long workdays just to keep their jobs. Gobbling fast food in their cubicles. Watching their health go from no activity. Not seeing their families, or no opportunity for a social life.

While finishing up my MLIS I'm still teaching college classes, and I can tell you these things greatly concern many of my students. With that in mind, the library world has this to offer. Not requiring the crazy level of productivity that you see in private industry. For that matter, not being locked into the notion that productivity is a linear function of hours spent in one's cubicle. We can offer our techies something the private sector can't or won't offer: a life outside the office. If we want to keep and attract good technical people, the library profession needs to promote and exploit that angle.

Bill, You make a good point. The lifestyle aspect of library jobs can be a selling point. I've seen us work our techies pretty hard, but I know this doesn't compare with what can happen in the private sector.

Interestingly, a couple of our library techies left us to work for dot-coms. Luckily for them, their new jobs have been relatively humane.