Bruce Kendall (Econ. Dev. Board for Tacoma/Pierce County)

Bruce Kendall spoke to our entrepreneur class last week about his work as the President/CEO of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma/Pierce County.  He described the role of his board as "growing the economy of our county ... by providing guidance for the top primary firms in the county."   Primary firms are businesses that make a product or service here and then export to outside of the county, so as to stimulate the economy within the county.  This is a great service to provide, as businesses such as SiteCrafting, Boeing, Multicare, Intel, and Toray Composites have all been involved with the EDB.  He mentioned some of the largest contributors to the county, including Boeing, JBLM (Joint Base Lewis-McChord), and a new allegiance, The Grand Alliance, who consist of shipping firms from Japan and Germany, who will shipping to Tacoma rather than Seattle beginning in June.
The most surprising thing that Bruce said during his lecture was that the biggest problem for companies not succeeding currently is a workforce quality shortage.  In other words, there is a shortage of quality workers in most industries in our county.  This is strange to me because, with the amount of (at least) decent schools and universities in our county, I would assume that the amount of good workers that are being produced would be at least enough to fulfill most needs in at least a majority of industries in our county.  This is apparently not the case, as many companies (with the his focus being on technology companies in particular) are having a hard time finding quality workers.  This, in my mind, can only be attributed to one of three major issues:
1. The quality of education (or possibly guidance for students) is sub-par or somehow compromised
2. The people obtaining quality training/education are migrating outside of the county for work
3. The amount of workers for the major industries in the county is too small, which relates back to guidance for students.
In any case, this is just confirmation of the fact that I will most likely have little trouble finding work when I finish my degree in CSS, which of course makes me happy.  Yet, on the flip-side of this is the fact that if I do chose to work for a large local software company (which I believe is the likely step after graduation), I may be working with people who are not quality workers.  In the software field, this is terrifying because we are almost always working in teams.  I had an idea of this from feedback from a few friends who work at large software companies, but this fact seems to confirm the issue.  This alone may be reason to consider serial entrepreneurship as a profession.  Being able to hone in on a small group of partners who have a good education, good work ethic, and get along very well (which is the only way I would ever start a business with other people) could provide a much more fruitful and enjoyable experience for a software engineer like myself.  As each guest lecturer presents, creating some sort of up-start becomes more and more appealing...