TalentFuse opens Carlsbad office

By: BRADLEY J. FIKES - Staff Writer

CARLSBAD — North County's growing technology sector has attracted another company: San Diego-based TalentFuse. The information technology staffing agency will open an office in Carlsbad today to serve its North County customers, including Carlsbad's Invitrogen Corp.

Two related events are behind the decision, said TalentFuse Chief Executive Brian Margarita: a strengthening economy and lengthening commute times across the Interstate 5/805 merge. A few years ago, after the technology crash, employees would agree to commute to North County from as far away as Chula Vista, Margarita said.

But as traffic worsens, employees don't want to drive as far, so North County employees increasingly want to work in North County. And as the economy improves, employees have more choices.

"We had to do this out of necessity," Margarita said of his 68-employee firm, which provides contracting services with temporary workers, as well as contract-to-hire. With a Carlsbad office, TalentFuse will be more convenient for prospective employees as well as clients in North County, he said.

San Diego County residents won't tolerate the long commutes that workers routinely perform in Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, Margarita said. That's because technology jobs pay less here than in those regions, he said.

"If someone is paid $160,000 a year to work in San Francisco, part of that is compensation for being on the road two hours a day to work and two hours back," Margarita said. But in San Diego County, he said, workers generally will balk at a commute of more than 40 minutes.

The Carlsbad office will also give TalentFuse an opportunity to focus on the North County market, which Margarita said is different from that in the rest of San Diego.

North County's technology companies are attractive to many tech workers because the companies tend to be younger and work with newer technology than companies in downtown San Diego or other locations in the city such as Sorrento Valley, Margarita said.

"North County tends to attract people on their way up, who work better in a creative environment," Margarita said. "Everything's new, the work tools are new."

For example, he said, newer companies are flocking to a Microsoft technology called dot net, which is exciting for employees to work with. The older companies are often concerned with maintaining decades-old software, he said, and software workers "hate" such work as boring and unchallenging.