This article is not a historical analysis. This article discusses how to deal and survive during tough times in tech industry, how to motivate yourself and your team. Both managers and individual contributors can find it useful.
Colleagues, the market is harsh these days, but we are doing great, this is for sure! On a side note, no vacations starting from now and hiring is on hold. Also, KPIs were updated to be more aggressive since we need to get back on foot. I believe in us, thank you, my *** family!
Another self-contradictory epic bullshit from the CEO that will end up with massive layoffs and the company going down 3 months later
Folks from the tech industry remember epidemic times a bit differently than others. There was shock, unrest, and anxiety from things that were happening in the world. However, there was also a tremendous spike in web applications usage, social networking, deliveries, and other sorts of online businesses. Offline offices became empty, remote-first became the lifestyle and everybody was Hopin for a quick recovery.
After the epidemic was over, the era of cheap money in the IT economy sector ended. Startups started closing up, Facebook clones were burning remaining cash, and tech people started feeling uneasy due to layoffs, hiring and salary freezes happening all over the industry. How did individuals and companies survive?
Crisis management and layoffs, hiring and salary freezes
The reasons for crises are always different, the response from market participants is usually the same. Companies save money, take the most conservative approaches and still look for opportunities to grow and dominate the market.
One of the first areas to suffer is anything related to research and development – investing tons of money with low probability of return on investment is too risky. Next areas to cut are remaining non-essential to the company survival functions. You do not need many engineers to run a stable app. You do not want to keep reimbursing expensive hardware if your datacenter is bleeding from lack of resources.
In the end, employees are worried and start looking for other opportunities. Management gets over excited to find ways to cut expenses and optimize things. People start burning out, people start leaving, people start coming back after not finding anything better. Let us see how the negative effects of poor market conditions can be minimized.
Dealing with tough times in tech
The key to survive during such times is to optimize and look for opportunities, not going too far with that at the same time. Any crisis is the time when rules and common patterns stop working. This means there are higher risks and much bigger gains for those who try and succeed.
Be honest
Do not sugar-coat and do not jeopardize trust. Do not share all the financial details down to the last penny, but it is a very valuable act of trust when employees see what is going on. The reputation and relationships matter not only in fairytales, but it goes down to good old money. It is more expensive to hire or retain people when a company has a bad reputation or starts from scratch under a new sign every time it fails to build relationships with its employees.
Understand what company needs and how you can help right now
If you do something that is not essential for a company to make money and to survive, think how you can apply your skills and knowledge to actually help the company to make money. In case you are essential, look for ways to do it more efficiently and effective. If you are a manager, explain this to your team and discuss with leaders what is going to change since the company is now in emergency mode. Most impressive and fast career progressions I have seen were coming from being initiative and helpful during hard times.
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Be here and keep work-life balance
Being here means that you should be available to help if there are people who rely on you. It can be a junior that started right after the hiring freeze when everybody is freaking out, it can be a CFO who is stuck and needs kind words of support.
At the same time, unless you are the owner or you are somehow involved in company ownership (for example, shares or options), keep in mind that companies go down, and they do this a lot. Reevaluating priorities is always a good thing to do, especially when the environment changes quickly. Leave enough time to rest, discuss the situation you and your company are in right now with people who are close to you. Be skeptical when somebody starts saying that “we are family” – no, you are employee and employer, this is it.
Motivate in non-materialistic ways
This is one of my favourite topics during interviews for management positions. Managers that are able to engage their teammates, somehow align interests and desires of workers with company goals are rare and are very valuable. Salary is something mandatory, but not enough to truly feel valued and engaged, so the crisis is the perfect opportunity to listen to teammates and try to give them what they want.
Assuming that there is a salary and promotion freeze, the average company can still do a lot of things to motivate. Lower the pressure by having less aggressive goals or hiring more people. Perform internal migration and let people work on something they want inside of the company. Get budgets on training and certifications while things are unstable. Invite your team over for a drink or BBQ, your call. We are all people, sometimes we are scared, but doing something you truly like is the best way to forget all troubles.
How to to survive tough times
In the end, everything will be back to normal until a new crisis comes. Those who survive crises are stronger, smarter, and more stable as they were before. The market and its inhabitants, as any living organism, adapt in order to survive.
Any crisis is time for new opportunities. You can help your company to survive and become stronger while keeping a good relationship with people and a good reputation. Your caring and your ideas can land company in a completely blue ocean that will become a turning point in your career. Honesty, deep understanding of the situation, keeping work-life balance, and non-materialistic motivation are the pillars of success during hard times.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst!