Throughout my many years of leading tech companies, I’ve immersed myself in the varying shifts in technology’s job market. However, the 2024 tech hiring market presents significant challenges for both companies and candidates, stemming from the rapid evolution of the industry, a shortage of skilled talent, workforce preferences for remote work options, increased competition, and a growing emphasis on cultural fit and soft skills. To navigate these challenges successfully, finding strategic approaches for employers is crucial.

We believe wholeheartedly that all work and no play is a dull way to spend our days. While many companies laser focus on productivity and output, we recognize that regularly infusing enjoyment and community into the workplace is essential for an engaged, thriving team.  Smarty's culture strikes a balance between innovation and fun, demonstrating that being serious about work doesn’t preclude being serious about play. This blog provides an insider's perspective into how our organization cultivates an energizing, recreational spirit across the company and why fun is a vital ingredient in our secret recipe for success.

Halloween is just around the corner, and since we eat and drink addresses every day at Smarty, we get into the spooky spirit by exploring the eerie and mysterious street names across the United States?In the movie "Beetlejuice," saying the titular character's name 3 times would summon the chaotic and mischievous demon himself.  At Smarty, we have a theory. Like Beetlejuice, every haunting creature has a magic number, and whenever someone sends mail to a house on Vampire Road in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, delivers pizza to Goblin Drive in Harrison, Arkansas, or navigates to Zombie Way in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, it brings each state closer to their own monster apocalypse.

Interpersonal skills and how they tie to leadership, teamwork, and business growth is no cakewalk. Yet every business knows that retention of employees is largely contingent upon quality interpersonal skills. That's why so many organizations implement principles and techniques taught by the greats. I'm sure you've heard of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends & Influence People", Steven R. Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", or maybe even "Dare to Lead" by Dr. Brene Brown.

In the realm of corporate meetings that should've been an email, Smarty's staff meetings are different from what most would expect. Employees at Smarty frequently name our weekly company-wide meeting as a highlight of their week. Like many companies, our staff meetings consist of company announcements, and updates you'd expect from any SaaS company. What makes our meetings unique is the lively, interactive, fun atmosphere where laughter is the most common sound and hurting cheeks are the most common symptom.

A Convergence of Holidays ----- It's almost Memorial Day, a time when most of us take a little extra time to relax. For a lot of us, it signals the start of summer; it comes around the time most school years end, and in warmer places, pools start to open after Memorial day. It's a day of barbeques and soda and chips and lots of other things. But this year is special. Get out your limited-edition comics and author-signed fantasy novels. Throw your polyhedral dice on the tabletop. Grab your lightsabers.

Here at Smarty, we enjoy our geekery. All of us indulge in pop culture to some degree, and while we all enjoy different flavors of said pop culture, there's at least one we all agree on without question: Star Wars. And that means that May 4th is a pretty crucial holiday for us. Hopefully all of you are celebrating in some way. We celebrated by buying tickets to go see Avengers: Age of Ultron together as an office. It's another Disney property. . . and it's part of the reason this article was written.

Comcast's Evil Twin We love our movies and our television. After a hard day at work, many Americans like to enjoy some downtime with a good TV show or movie. When technology advanced in the 1980s in the form of video cassette tapes, this gave us a new choice for how and when we consumed media. From this innovation came a natural outgrowth: the video store. Virtually every town in America had one. The stores weren't glamorous, but we came. We came because we value our ability to choose. Before long there came the video megastore: Blockbuster.

Why Do Some Businesses Fail, and Others Succeed Against All Odds? On the last day of my microeconomics class, my professor asked us a question: > "If there are 1. 333 trillion barrels of oil left on the planet and we use 6. 89 billion barrels of oil each year, how long will it take for us to run out of oil?" Pencils and calculators came out to solve what seemed like a math problem. I also started to do the long division, but then stepped back. It occurred to me that economics is a branch of sociology, not math.