Layoff Journal Week 31 – Scarcity
The scarcity of jobs for senior engineering leaders like myself, recruiters, and so many others has been palpable all year. For many, myself included, this is the first time in their career they’ve experienced an economy like this. Other industries are used to the boom-bust cycle, but tech has long been resilient. The zero interest rate policy phenomenon (7m read time if you’re unfamiliar) created a hyper-growth cycle with easy money combined with high leverage opportunities in software that was not sustainable, and we’re experiencing a correction. We’re seeing scarcity in money, job openings, and access to resources like AI for the first time in many years.
Scarcity can create an impulse for change, see layoffs, budgets, and reorgs focused on efficiency. But scarcity can also create a negative mindset, focusing the mind on what it doesn’t have and driving lower-quality decisions or distracting from important long-term planning with short-term needs. As a job seeker in this environment, it’s easy to slip into a scarcity mentality, focusing on your finances, job prospects, skills, and more. We’ll dig into ways to overcome and leverage this personally and professionally below.
Scarcity in the Numbers
9,000 – 14,000 Nokia employees to be laid off, up to 16% of their workforce, from their Mobile Networks, Cloud, and Network Services divisions. Source
100% of employees of Convoy to be let go as the company shuts down due to drops in the freight market and monetary tightening. Source
8.9 million tech workers according to the CompTIA “State of the Tech Workforce” report, of which around 250,000 have been laid off in 2023 – source, source
Work Scarcity
A lot of the advice for dealing with and overcoming a scarcity mindset can be very self-help-y, so these seven tips (3m read time for just the tips, or 14m for a deeper exploration into scarcity mindset’s causes and impact for anyone looking for a more profound read,) are a quick reminder of the ways to be taking care of ourselves. Thinking of those of you still on the full-time job hunt, knowing your budget, and remembering to take time for yourself amongst all the job applications and (hopefully) interviews is the key. Connecting with others who will encourage and lift you is excellent. I know the market still stinks for many folks, but please remember this isn’t about your skills and abilities; it’s a business cycle, and you will be in demand again (hopefully soon!).
Scarcity at Work
While a deep-seated scarcity mentality is a negative, as a manager, creating some sense of scarcity at work can be helpful. Let me give an example. By forcing teams to work with fewer engineers, QA, or DevOps support than they believe they need, they are forced to prioritize the features they take on ruthlessly. Teams will automate tedious tasks to reduce their impact on the team’s time. Taking on only the most essential or impactful product features and reducing the overhead of running the team means a much higher return on investment (ROI) from the team (especially when you factor in that employees are often the top cost for organizations.)
Now, you can take this too far and create too much scarcity. The team, starved of the resources it needs to invest for the future, makes only short-term decisions. Or, feeling that they’re not in the growth and profit center for the organization, employees begin to look for other roles, teams, or companies where they are empowered to have more impact.
You can see it’s a balancing act of supporting teams and challenging them to drive a healthy ROI from each team. Of course, how you measure ROI for teams is as varied as the teams you manage. Customer-facing teams will be able to track customer experience and impact quickly. Internal platform teams must track their value based on enabling others or reducing risk. You get the idea.
Fun
Final Words
If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.