Technology in The Tidewater

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November 20, 2000 (Computerworld) -- From Northern Virginia, past Washington and up into Maryland and Delaware, the Tidewater region might better be discussed in the plural. It's more like three distinct regions, each with its own identity, traditions and set of industries.
The savvy information technology professional who's considering a career in that section of the Mid-Atlantic states must be careful to choose exactly which flavor will ultimately be the most satisfying to him.
Business Climate
The most obvious difference among the three areas is the types of businesses that thrive in each. Northern Virginia is home to Internet companies such as America Online Inc. in Dulles, as well as biotechnology research firms and companies supporting both the government and the military. The focus changes as you move north.
"In Baltimore, we're a little port," says Brian Ocheltree, CEO of E.magination Network LLC. "We're on the water, so there's a lot of shipping around here. There's manufacturing plants." There are also notable health care institutions such as Johns Hopkins Medical School.
It's very different from the saturation of white-collar businesses in Washington and Virginia. The Baltimore job market is also unusual for the Mid-Atlantic region, according to Buster Houchins, managing director of Mid-Atlantic operations at Christian & Timbers, a Cleveland-based recruiting company.
Outside Maryland, manufacturing falls off, Houchins says. The biggest financial institutions don't make an appearance until you reach Delaware, which has its share of such companies, including Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s service center in Newark and MBNA America Bank N.A. in Wilmington. Delaware is also home to Du Pont Co. in Wilmington.
There is certainly plenty of work to be found in the region, though the specifics depend on what you do and where you look.
According to the U.S. Office of Technology Policy, Virginia as a whole is ranked third in the projected number of IT employees per state, with 135,100 expected by 2006. In terms of the expected percentage of total employment that IT workers will represent in 2006, Virginia leads with 3.7%.
Delaware is tiny in comparison, with an anticipated statewide IT employment rate of 6,550 in 2006, which is expected to be 1.4% of total employment. This number must be taken with a grain of salt, as Du Pont alone reportedly has several thousand IT employees.
Projections for Maryland weren't available at the time of this report, but "there's a shortage of 10,000 IT folks in the Baltimore/Washington corridor," says Jamie Spriggs, executive vice president and CIO of Web-based benefits firm RewardsPlus Inc. in Baltimore.
Not Interchangeable
Because of the segmentation of industries in each of the three regions, someone with a particular background - say, in health care - might find a position more easily in one area than in another.

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