IT workers get the call

From...

By Deborah Radcliff

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDG) -- A high-tech information exchange had just gotten under way at the Capital Hilton Hotel when the World Trade Center was attacked September 11. Then the Pentagon was hit minutes later, prompting an evacuation of the 28 senators and speakers cloistered in a conference room at the hotel.

One of those speakers was Howard Schmidt, chief security officer at Microsoft Corp. As he drove his car from the Hilton, people were pouring out of the Pentagon and onto Interstate 395, the road that Schmidt, an Army reservist, took to report to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 20 miles south.

He hasn't been home since.

As of October 2, some 22,400 National Guard members and reservists had been called back to active duty, about half the number President Bush had been authorized to recall, according to Brian Dunbar, publisher of AmeriForce Publishing Inc. in Irvine, California.

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There's no telling how many of those reservists hail from technology jobs. But Dunbar said many military roles are technology-related, particularly intelligence and security jobs, and the military is selectively calling back a lot of people like Schmidt with specialized skills.

Schmidt has been assigned to law enforcement and counterintelligence in the computer operations unit of the Joint Task Force that monitors all of the Pentagon's global information networks.

Brian Koref, a security architect for a large insurance firm in California, hasn't been recalled to active duty yet, although he said he has wanted to serve since the day of the attacks. He's a computer crime investigator for the Air Force Reserve.

Unlike Schmidt, who continues his Microsoft work "virtually" (through e-mails and voice mail) and at full pay, Koref would potentially have to leave unfinished a number of complex projects, including a single sign-on rollout and a secure ID project. And his pay is also in question.

"My boss is supportive, but he's concerned that he'll be left without anyone to continue my work," Koref says.

If his company is unwilling to augment his pay, he would be earning about 75 percent less than he does now. Legally, an employer must keep open a job for someone returning to active duty. But there are no guarantees on what position the employee would return to. And employers don't have to augment salaries or continue benefits.

But according to a 1999 survey by job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., 75 percent of companies said during the Bosnian conflict that they would make up any gap between military pay and ordinary salaries. And because the recent acts of terrorism occurred on United States soil, that percentage is likely to be higher this time around, according to John Challenger, CEO of the Chicago-based company.

"Although we haven't updated the survey, my sense is that more companies are picking up the salary difference because this crisis is more omnipresent," he says. "Companies are also promising re-employment and extending health and retirement benefits."