High-tech industry is powering up again

Helped by a spate of acquisitions, start-ups are getting funded, which gives them a chance to hire. It looked as if the economy had dealt a powerful blow to L.J. Mottel, a 35-year-old father of two, when his employer, the Fontainebleau hotel and resort in Las Vegas, filed for bankruptcy and laid him off. ¶ But unlike other victims of the downturn, Mottel had the luck of a high-roller on a hot streak: He was the Fontainebleau’s director of information technology, and that made him a hot commodity. He didn’t have to wait long before getting a new job at Service-now.com, a Solana Beach, Calif., tech firm that develops Web applications to help companies automate their IT departments. ¶ “I never got the panicky feeling,” Mottel said. “I felt the IT field is the right place to be.” ¶ While unemployment continues to limp along at nearly 10% nationally and more than 12% in California, the high-tech industry is on a roll. Sparked in part by a series of acquisitions, start-ups are getting funded again, giving them the cash infusion needed to hire. ¶ Some tech companies are even having a hard time finding qualified employees to fill their openings, a reflection both of the competition to hire talent and of some workers’ unwillingness to move.

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