How has the tech skills gap impacted your company?

We have challenges. We took matters into our own hands, but there are two things that are happening right now in our industry that are challenges: The time to take an open position and fill it has probably quadrupled in the last decade. For me, in our world as a service provider, every day I don't have an engineer that's producing revenue for me is a lost opportunity, and it's not just the billable rate I give them, but it's [the impact on] building relationships … that lead to longer-term business.

The second thing: Because the talent pool is so shallow today, we're creating [something similar to] free agency in baseball. We're trading the same players between companies. So I hire someone. They come to work for my company for two years, then our competitor hires them and they go to work for that company for two years. One of their clients hires that employee for another two years, and we're seeing the salaries go up where their salaries are exceeding their capabilities, especially as a service provider where we need to be able to charge an adequate rate to cover the expenses and salaries. We're getting to a point where we're having to charge more than our clients can afford because the cost now is so high.