Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/17/2010 -- The talent war going on between the tech giants in Silicon Valley shows no signs of slowing down.

The big companies of Silicon Valley, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and newcomer Zynga are not only in a war with each other over getting each other’s brightest talent but also with startups. Angel investors have poured in huge amounts in the first half of the year and the startups are picking up engineers now from even established companies. The attraction for these engineers is that the startups could be developing the next new big thing in social networking or gaming.

Google has been forced to raise its salary across the board by 10 percent for all its employees worldwide beginning new year. It also agreed to pay a $1000 bonus by the year end. There are reports that it offered one of its top engineers $3.5 million when it learned that Facebook was wooing him. Ex-Google employees account for 10 percent of Facebook’s staff.

The industry has seen an increase in job postings for engineers and other technical positions by 69% in the last 12 months. The people who are most in demand are software engineers, graphic designers, and project managers. CEO A. Harrison Barnes of InformationTechnologyCrossingsays 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.