Michael Saunby

Exeter

IT Wizard

Perhaps Ricardo Semler has the answer here. Don't hire individuals, hire teams. If more effort/resource is required it's for the team to decide whether to work longer hours, hire new team members, or use different technology.

The business needs to keep an eye on things, since it might be better for the long term to have a largish team of average performers, earning average pay, rather than a couple of world-class wizards doing amazing wizardly IT.

As a non CIO, it strikes me as improbable that CIOs actually know how to design jobs, recruit the best staff, enable them to develop, retain them and keep costs down for any sizeable group of IT staff (unless they trained as cat-herds). Then to expect them to actually have any clue about new technologies is clearly far too much.

Shift as much of the non-strategic decisions elsewhere, and that includes worries/speculation about encouraging the next generation. If that is important to you as an individual, volunteer at your local school or college, or give grants and prizes - perhaps to schools in India!