How big a problem?

One reason the impending boomer exodus seems to have so little resonance in IT is that, relatively speaking, there isn't a very large population of older IT workers, says Peter Cappelli, author of the upcoming book Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in the Age of Uncertainty It's mostly a young person's game," he says.

Statistics from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics bear this out. In 2007, only 10 per cent of the US IT workforce was 55 years or older, compared with 17.6 per cent across all occupations. Moreover, considering that the midpoint age of boomers is currently about 51, retirement is more than 10 years off for many.

There are other reasons for the lack of concern. One is that although the costs of losing key IT personnel to retirement can be high, they are also hidden, gradual and indefinite, says Dave DeLong, president of research firm David DeLong & Associates and author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce (Oxford University Press, 2004).

"Nobody will go to the executive board and say, "Last year we could manage this process more effectively, but Joe left, so now we can't,' " DeLong explains. It's a loss of face, so they'd explain it in other terms."

In addition, he says, it's common practice for companies to let IT professionals retire, figuring retirees can be rehired as consultants without their pay showing up in the budget as a salary cost. Of course, this is something of a shell game, DeLong points out. Not only are companies spending "an incredible amount of money on rehiring retirees," he says, but they're also not transferring their knowledge. "They just throw them back in the job, so they're just prolonging the problem," he notes.

And finally, he adds, do you really want your business to depend on someone who can go play golf anytime he wants?