The parallel these days is how hot candidates are affecting the job market. Computer giants like IBM, Compaq and Dell can afford to court the best candidates with high salaries, bonuses and other incentives that leave smaller companies struggling to compete, just as major-market teams skew sports salaries.

At least, that's the opinion of Nan Mutnick, of recruiting firm Mitchell/Martin (New York). While the last two years have been a great run for computer-industry hires, Mutnick said the frenzy for engineers has created its share of havoc in the human-resources world.

"A candidate becomes what drives salary as opposed to [there being] a particularly salary range for a particular skill set," said Mutnick. "You can see someone right out of school with a technology [that's hot] earning more than someone with experience but a technology that's less hot. That's not normal, but it's been the norm for the past two years," she said.

Peter Lehrman, president of Emerging Technology Search (Roswell, Ga.), said the pace of change is part of the problem. Technology becomes stale faster than bread, and what a masters candidate in computer science finished two years studying in 1998 might make a week's lesson for an entering freshman next fall. "It's hard for us to find some of the older technology skill sets that are still in demand, such as IMS, AS400 Cobol and mainframe technology," he said.

At the same time, emerging areas, almost by definition, frustrate a company's desire to hire experience. "E-commerce is a very big issue, but it hasn't been around very long," noted Lehrman. Companies that want two years on the job have to settle for half that, he said. But because the market is so competitive, they pay just as much. That, observed Mutnick, can lead to wage inflation.

On the other hand, said Barbara Castellano, the candidate-driven market has made computer companies of all stripes a little choosier when it comes to recruiting. "Computer companies are very specific. They won't just settle" for the first reasonably well-qualified person, said Castellano, president of Professional Computer Placement (Chantilly, Va.). "These guys are so valuable that that throws me for a loop," she said.

Frequently, she said, a company will go without a full-time hire, biding its time with consultants and temporary staff until the perfect person comes along. That's good news for job seekers, she said, because they, too, can use their part-time status as an excuse to go fishing for a better, or at least, more permanent position.

Just as Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has spoken in the past of "irrational exuberance" in the stock market, Mutnick has seen a similar bubble in the compensation for computer engineers and other high-tech workers. Attempts to woo potential employees with non-wage perks like stock options may ultimately hurt the industry as a whole, she said, by undermining competition. "Companies that don't have much money or stock options suffer, [and] are prohibited from hiring good people," she said. "We're hoping to see it regulate itself."