There’s been huge layoffs announced in the tech industry; and that’s been spreading to even the big established technology firms like Microsoft and Google. One could say this is many years in the making as those firms have grown perhaps too big and reaching the edges of the overall economy. Hence when the economy starts shrinking or just slowing its growth, these companies no longer have that much room to realise their original growth ambitions.
Yet at the same time, there’s a manpower shortage. We don’t have sufficient good people in the market who versatile enough to switch rapidly from one industry to another; or from even one company to the next, despite having gradually moved out of the whole lifelong employment culture and psyche since decades ago.
After years of drumming up the whole idea of upskilling, reskilling and all that nonsense around training, certification, we made the labour market even more rigid. And we do so by telling people stories around scarcity in skills, training, and affected their narrative and confidence in what they can actually do. Now you have to be ‘qualified’, and chosen by someone or some organisation before you can do the work.
That is simply not true. You need to choose what is the work you’d like to do and who are the people you seek to serve. And allow the job to naturally take its shape.