Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/12/2010 -- Amid a stagnant job market nationwide and especially in California, Silicon Valley is facing a shortage of hi-tech workers.

This fact has been making news in the IT circles and the Bay Area news outlets for a while now. Both big companies and startups are having a hard time retaining talent.

The startups have gotten plenty of seed funding in the first half of the year and are now in hiring mode. The big companies are on a hiring spree and the main four are Google (+19%), Zynga (+178%), Facebook (+70%) and Twitter (+203%).

The talent shortage runs both ways. Startups have a hard time matching salaries with the big companies. But the ace that startups have is that their engineers get to create something new. The reason that startups have been on a hiring streak these past few months is that early-stage investing has seen a sharp surge. Even Google had to announce a 10 percent across-the-board raise and $1000 holiday bonuses for its employees. The raise becomes effective in January.

Indeed.com has seen a 69% increase in the IT job postings since October 2009. The people in demand are software engineers, graphic designers, and project managers. CEO A. Harrison Barnes of InformationTechnologyCrossing says that for computer professionals, this was the best time since the dotcom boom ended. “IT workers need to have the latest in demand skills, that’s the key to getting these new jobs.” Barnes’ firm has been able to compile a list of over 13,000 IT jobs in the Bay Area so far.