The world is still recovering from the effects of the pandemic. In 2020, the virus spread with enormous speed, no one was prepared, and the consequences shook the economy for several years.
If we are talking about hiring in the technical field, then the pandemic has changed the picture beyond recognition. And many trends that began during quarantine do not roll back even after it ends.
According to the Workable survey 2022, 82% of companies remained remote or hybrid even after the pandemic. Almost 42% say that the flexible schedule introduced during the quarantine became a permanent way of working after it ended.
Thus, it is clear that business is trying to meet the aspirations of existing and potential employees. According to the GoodHire survey, in the USA, 63% of workers believe companies will have a hard time attracting people without the remote working option. 33% say they would quit in case of returning to the office.
Those companies that were able to switch to a different mode of operation or even change the specialization of their business, survived during the pandemic. After all, COVID-19 gave an incredible boost to startups that specialize in, for example, delivery or medical IT services. For them, the “black swan” was not a collapse, but a starting point.
Statements about a possible full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine had been heard several months before the event itself. But the beginning of a full-scale war led to such an upheaval that it was impossible to be ready for all its consequences anyways.
Thousands of Ukrainian developers who provided outsourcing services to companies around the world were forced to become refugees or went to the front to defend the country. Due to the aggression, Russian and Belarusian programmers are no longer considered as possible outsourcing employees.
Thus, high-tech companies were forced to look for other markets for hiring and switch to Eastern Europe or Asia. In Latin America, salary rates for programmers have increased by 24%, as the region has become more popular due to the search for an alternative to Ukrainians.
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A wave of layoffs at tech giants
In just a few months of 2022, such high-tech monsters as Amazon, Twitter, Meta and Apple have laid off tens of thousands of workers.
It’s hard to say for sure whether it is a “black swan” but in any case, such a large-scale event already has consequences that other nimble companies can take advantage of. After all, the market is currently flooded with underappreciated techies with experience at Amazon and Apple looking for a new job. They will become much more accessible for hiring.
How to prepare for events that cannot be prepared for
Of course, in the original sense, “black swans” are events of a planetary scale. But tentatively, we can also call such “birds” local unexpected situations that can cause a collapse at the level of a company or team.
The history of hi-tech is full of such situations. What is only worth the case of the fail of the mobile wallet ISIS, launched in 2007. The company couldn’t predict that it would soon unwittingly become the namesake of a brutal extremist group.
As mentioned above, you cannot prepare for a “black swan”, but you can realize its possibility, reduce risks and work on flexibility.