Tech experts mull bleeding workforce
By Zion Rufus
Professionals in the Nigerian tech industry have urged the workforce to explore new skills as global layoffs near 200,000. Speaking exclusively with MARKETING EDGE, the tech gurus appraised the development and offered tips on how to overcome the temporary setback occasioned by the lay-offs.
Following the announcement earlier today by Google CEO, Sundar Pichai that the company will lay off 12,000 employees globally, MARKETING EDGE went to town to seek experts opinion on the implication for the industry and the affected people
Temitope Orilua, CEO Eagle Predict advised Nigerians employed in tech firms to learn new skills.
“To think that your copywriting skills, Facebook and Google media buying skills will help you in the next 5 years will be a joke. People will have AI to do all these things. It’s time to start learning new skills such as management, software engineering, entrepreneurship, blockchain tech, data science, and many more.”
Giving a holistic view about the development, Ademola Adekunbi, an adtech consultant , believes that the development is not strange as it’s been brewing for some time.
“As harsh as it sounds, recessions have long been in existence. Every decade or so, we have 1 or 2 that come to remind you of the state of things. All we can do is embrace that reality and plot our next step. Be it, pivot to building a solution and selling it (if you’ve saved up enough to start a business) or moving on to the next tech role you can find. Tech is still going strong right now, and it won’t change anytime soon.”
While sympathising with the victims, in whose shoes he said he had been and so could empathgise, he advised that , “the next line of action is to dust yourself up and move on to the next role you can find,”
For Princewill Ejirika, Head, Digital, Growth and Product Marketing, Omnibiz, professionals affected by the mass layoffs and intending tech experts should consider freelancing and learning new skills to stay relevant.
He urged: “Identify opportunities to start to provide services to small businesses. Find adjacent industries that are thriving, reposition yourself to see how you can solve problems there in that Industry. Go on a sabbatical if you can afford one; just chill b be a non-capitalist slave for a bit.”
The Google’s announcement is coming few days after Microsoft laid off 10,000 workers. According to Layoffs.fyi, a website that has been tracking tech layoffs since March 2020, in 2022, there were at least 154,000 layoffs from more than 1,000 tech companies.
In October 2022, nearly $1tn was wiped off the value of the world’s biggest tech companies; in November, these multinationals began to execute job cuts, blaming it on a variety of interconnected factors such as overzealous hiring during the pandemic, a slowdown in e-commerce activity, and people spending less time online as in-person events return.
On its part, Twitter fired 50% of its workforce via email, and 80% of contract employees without warning or formal notice.. Amazon laid off about 10,000 across the retail division, Human Resources, and devices unit; in January, Amazon also announced the elimination of 18,000 roles. Creative powerhouses, Omnicom and Interpublic cut 10,000 roles between them during 2020 because of the pandemic. Other companies involved in the layoff spree include Netflix, Snap, Oracle, SoundCloud, Coinbase, Kuda, Apple, Google.
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