We came out of the pandemic with a sense of optimism and momentum. For the first half of 2022, the tech industry was running full out. Then the third quarter hit and everything came to a screeching halt. One minute we are talking about the great resignation and quiet quitting. And the next minute we are talking about downsizing and staff cuts.
We’ve all heard the stories of high tech layoffs in the big firms. Many of these “self inflicted wounds” – overspending at Facebook on the metaverse, the antics of Elon Musk at Twitter and even mighty Google claiming that making billions is not enough, they have to make more billions.
And in this industry, the major cost is – people. So we’ve had these big layoffs.
Initially it didn’t seem like something to worry about. If the giants were pulling back, we were so short of resources in this industry that it might be a bit of a blessing. All of the these people would be absorbed into other firms.
Gartner was still predicting tech growth. ITWC’s own CIO Census, a study of CIOs showed that tech budgets were still increasing. But now, a scant few months later, we’re hearing rumblings from beyond the giants – budgets being pulled back as we move into 2023.
Those who lived through a number of economic downturns, and dealt with the impacts wonder if what we are seeing is a harbinger of past recessions. Or do these mixed signals indicate something new? Regardless of how it manifests itself, how will we manage the human impact?
To help us make sense of what is happening, we have Kamales Lardi, Managing Director of Valtech Switzerland and author of The Human Side of Digital Business Transformation, to be our guest for the Hashtag Trending Weekend interview.
The post Interview with Kamales Lardi, author of the Human Side of Digital Business Transformation. Hashtag Trending, the Weekend Edition. first appeared on IT World Canada.