High-tech talent and immigration reform

High-tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple are usually very good about conducting research and development. But they are also notorious for poaching talent from one another and buying upstart competitors. These hot prospects are quickly integrated into their parent companies and become key parts of competitive strategy.

In high-tech fields, talent alone matters. What rarely matters to a successful company is whether a good idea came from the inside or the outside. The technology companies that become household names get there by finding the right people with the right skills and putting them to work to develop money-making ideas quickly and successfully.

The battle for highly skilled tech talent can be fierce. The people who know how to make the modern world hum faster are like an elite cadre of wizards, for as Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Welcome to the 21st century, where the wizards are sought-after like nobody else. And in this era, countries behave a lot like companies just on a bigger scale and with even higher stakes.