Hiring has taken several major turns since my talk on digital transformation for SMEs in 2021:
☑️ Fast-paced “always hire” cycle from 2016-2017 adding headcount indefinitely reached a peak.
☑️ Pandemic reality led to distributed forces, and tapping into global pools when on-site was no longer a competitive advantage started a new trend.
☑️ The overemployment trend became prevalent (along with mouse clickers and working 2 hours a day in corporations). Productivity had stalled, and investors called out Meta, Google, and other global corporations for flooding the pool, hiring at unrealistic terms, yet stalling innovation.
☑️ Mass layoffs and recessionary state, followed by… the biggest tech invention in the past 25+ years, mass-adopted GPTs. Fewer people delivered higher outputs, faster.
☑️ The latest market transformation prioritizes highly experienced people, now empowered with more automation and faster prototyping, and scrutinizes 9-to-5 roles managing low-level tasks that could be automated.
Market resets happen every 10-12 years on average (recessions), and global market shifts – every 25ish years (today, the dot-com boom in 2000s, the 1973 market reset, WWII, the 1929 stock boom).
The illusion that humans can study hard, get a job, and retire in the same field is largely fake. This is applicable in medicine or law, and offline industries like construction, energy, oil, where ongoing training is primarily adding new machinery or powering solar panels on top of warehouses.
White collar jobs are taking a massive hit in the interim, with disappearing professions overnight.
My preferred hire 14 months ago was “AI Operator”. Now, agents are doing pretty well, and the director roles at DevriX I was holding off on, previously requiring 7-10 people underneath to complete the journey, can now fill the bucket with 2 existing people and 1 strong additional hire.
(And we have 2 of these open as we speak for our Sofia HQ).
Retired founders of Nasdaq companies, famous VC investors, and independent thought leaders got back on the field in 2023-2024. Missing a “once in 25 years opportunity” is not acceptable for determined market leaders.
