This Has Got to Stop

Along with the news today that HJ Heinz is laying off 350 staff members at Pittsburgh headquarters is a less noted item about the purchase by Facebook of a local high tech startup, Mobile Technologies.  Mobile Technologies developed a product called Jibbigo that is a translation service application which can be used on your smartphone.  I don’t need to go into details of why this could be a very important piece of technology for any large social media platform, like Facebook.

 

My problem is the statement by Mobile Technologies founders who spun out of Carnegie Mellon: “once the deal has closed, many of us will be joining the company at their headquarters in Menlo Park, California.”  You can rest assured that given the size of Mobile Technologies, all of their current staff will transfer to Menlo Park.  So why can’t Facebook, like Google, establish a Pittsburgh engineering office?  This “brain drain” of sorts, which has happened time and again over a generation in Pittsburgh, has got to stop.

 

I fully comprehend that high tech must be fluid and respond to opportunities as they present themselves.  That ability lays the groundwork, the very ecosystem, for future success and innovations.  But especially for those enterprises coming out of CMU there has been too much of a history of innovative companies grown on their campus only to be removed to more “glamorous” locations as soon as the dollars beckon.  This has got to stop.

 

I don’t have an answer for this and in all reality there is no “answer” for the cycle of job creation and flow.  It’s a sign of a healthy environment when an area like Pittsburgh repeatedly produces innovative ideas and enterprises.  And it’s only natural that the best and the brightest, be they people or ideas or companies, migrate to where they’re most appreciated: that is, where the capital to foster growth is located.  However, I would like to see more leadership from “the top”, by which I mean the top of the particular organization in Pittsburgh where these creative enterprises are formed.  In this particular case, as in so many recent others, that top is the leadership at Carnegie Mellon University.  What is CMU doing to foster Pittsburgh’s future growth besides taking in tuition payments and spitting out high value employees for Boston, Seattle and the Silicon Valley?

 

Look for me to follow up this piece with something addressed to CMU’s incoming President.