While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat in the electrical engineering dept, there was a shortage of software engineers. Whenever someone finds out that there was a software engineer with any kind of experience in electrical engineering, they usually were courted and eventually, they go to another department. While a director of a another department cannot “take” away one of your team members, they can offer him a better situation and that person can leave. I was managing a series of R&D projects and needed a software engineer to work on a project that another software engineer who recently left came up with. The previous software engineer designed the project, pitched it to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and had everyone excited about the idea. NRL ran with the idea and got us funding for the idea. That software engineer went to another department. I ended up with all this money sitting around and no work being done and no one with the skills to do the work. I went to my management and explained the problem and told them I was going head hunting. I approached friends in the same company in other dept. and told them about the project. They found it interesting. I went back to my management and explained that if they want this huge contract, they would have to speak to my friend and court them appropriately. My timeline and task were not affected due to me finding someone else to do the work. I wish employees didn’t have to be taken but it does benefit the employee because they get to choose which job they want to work on and usually get something out of it.