A bright future in a dimly lit office

Being a CEO means finding astute ways to lure clueless college students into the glorious path of IT. A few years ago in 1998 when I came to this company, hiring was a piece of cake. Everyone was so fascinated by the Internet, Marc Andreessen was making the cover of Time and every retard in town was just giddy to send their first e-mail. To top that, we had the Y2K issue on our side. This, my friends, was even better than the H1N1 flu in term of panic. People were freaking out and building themselves bunkers in the desert to isolate themselves from the imaginary disaster. So in the middle of this perfect storm, we were able to hire almost every living creature with a diploma, tag them on an IT project and rack the money. Being an IT CEO in those days was so easy, I was almost ashamed to cash my paycheck.

Fast forward to 2009, the economy is crashing hard and the IT world is 20 times more complex and - truth to be told - people are not 20 times smarter. If you doubt my word, go spend an hour on FaceBook. So we're doing our very best to attract those Gen Y youths into our company. And it's not easy, believe me. The other day one of my director was interviewing a young guy in his early 20's for a job as a .NET programmer. I popped into the meeting just the fun of making my director uncomfortable, and I took a hard look at the young guy.

White shorts, black t-shirt with some kind of a slogan on it, greasy long hair, a goatee and an earring. I cut through the interview. Listen, I said to the young guy, this job involves meeting with customers to assess their needs, draft some diagrams, code something, you know, so it's important to look good. And looking good means wearing a freaking suit and shaving.

The guy fought back and said: listen, bald dude, I'm the top programmer in my class and I know more about .NET than anyone else, so chill out okay? Then he tried to negotiate a salary way above what my VPs are doing, he wanted a mountain bike as a signing bonus and one Xbox 360 station in his office to "unwind after a day's work". I said, listen punk, this company is not a dorm room and you've gotta get serious if you want to work here. This is Montreal okay, you're not in Mountain View and the Google circus. The guy looked at me, said I was so totally uncool, my company sucked because there were no espresso machines, and got out of the room.

Where is our world heading?