Tech Industry Remains Poster Child for Success, Despite Economic Woes

Innovation is often tough to define and even tougher to produce, but amid all the fiscal doom and gloom, technology companies still say they have the right stuff to get the U.S. economy back on track.

Representatives from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Accenture, Siemens, and other companies joined President Obama at an event on August 5 to announce new efforts to help military veterans find jobs. “Today’s announcement brings people, companies, and agencies together to increase the impact we can have on helping the job situation,” Curt Kolcun, Microsoft’s vice president for the U.S. public sector, said in a telephone interview afterward. Microsoft pledged to provide 10,000 technology training and certification packages to veterans. “All jobs require some kind of tech skills … and I think this is an opportunity relative to tech jobs in the United States,” Kolcun said. AT&T, for example, launched two new online programs designed to help veterans transfer their military skills to jobs at the wireless company.