Crossroads: David Mavashev, Nastel Technologies

David Mavashev,Founder and chief executive of Nastel Technologies, Inc.

Economic outlook: Island's economy is recovering, but government needs to reduce taxes, offer more small-business incentives.

Job outlook: The world has become more global and technology has allowed outsourcing jobs. But businesses will have to hire local for a number of professions, like architects and engineers.

In our market . . . which looks for highly skilled people in software development and executives with a background in marketing and sales, it's not an easy task to find people here on Long Island. . . .

They are not cheap, either. Even though people [are] talking about high unemployment rates, we just don't see that reflected in this type of labor. . . . But certain types of professions will require people to be local. You cannot outsource, for example, sales engineering . . . [a] strong architect, that you need to have here. I see that there is . . . a trend to get out from the recession. If we compare the recession to the previous one, which was 2000 and 2001, this recession looks . . . not as strong as it was at that time. . . .

At that time we actually had to lay off some people. During [the] . . . current recession, we haven't laid of people. We actually hired people. . . . We hired people here on Long Island and across the United States. . . . We are basically selling enterprise type of software, performance management for applications, and there is a demand.