#82: How The Human Cloud Can Make You Recession Proof, Google The Latest To Join Hiring Freeze, What's The Point of Management?
Maybe tech companies shouldn't have gone all in on FTE's? Results...layoffs, hiring freezes... and a shock to the authoritarian manager default.
🚨🚨🚨 We’re BACK!!!! 👇👇👇
Leaders,
💩 The Bad: Inflation, hiring freezes (mostly for white collar, non technical roles)
CPI hit 9.1% in June. Insanity.
Google the latest to slow hiring. It’s not a total freeze, but Google said it’ll be prioritizing engineering or other critical technical roles.
Google employees were also challenged to be "more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger” by Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
WTBFD 1: You still need talent. You can’t do everything on your own. Yet the way you access talent needs to flexible, not full time, and strategic. Ding, ding…freelancers in the Human Cloud.
WTBFD 2: Ever more important is scaling up/down based off current demand, not predicted demand. That’s where tech companies got themselves in trouble. Instead of realizing the revenue boom was a one time opportunity, they planned their talent strategy as if the peak would continue and over-indexed on full time employees instead of having the agility of freelancers.
Quote from Abby Forman of Fiverr in her upcoming leader portal: “freelancers have the flexibility to come and help when needed and leave when they're not. They can help a company scale up and down based on changing customer demands and market needs”
WTBFD 3: In relation to white collar management being most at risk during hiring freezes and layoffs, management is increasingly about trust building, not following routine tasks or authoritative delegating of routine tasks.
Matt Coatney - “Authoritative leadership is dead.”
🤔 The Good: We might be able to afford a house soon…about 60,000 home sales nationwide fell through in June, equivalent to 15% of transactions that went into contract, according to brokerage Redfin.
Maybe us millennials can finally buy a house??
👊 Guest Post: Sam Orrin, Global Director, Worksome
So, this is the backdrop to every conversation we're having right now...
There's a recession coming
We've just had Covid, maybe it's coming back again
The world is, generally, nuts
No one knows what people really want. Are they going back to offices? Do they want to work full-time? Do they live in the Metaverse? Who knows 🤷
One common thread is this - it's obvious that the best ideas happen in downturns. Everyone will have seen the "Slack, Uber, Airbnb started in 2008" posts on here. Everyone will have seen the big companies making redundancies, losing $billions off their market cap, failing to turn the ship around after 2008 and after Covid.
Flexibility is the way. Contractors, freelancers, gig workers, whatever you want to call them, are no longer an expensive cover, especially when 50% of your offers are rejecting you and your perm average tenure is only 12 months anyway.
Hiring someone for a week, a month or a year-long project is the only way to truly be agile. Hiring them fast, getting through the red tape fast, hiring them safely to HR and procurement's standards. Like, fast as in a few hours or a couple of days ⚡
Agile is not hot-desking, or allowing people to work from the Bahamas...
It's this ☝️
The companies that thrive in the next 18 months are flexible by design.
…………………….
Sam Orrin is the Global Director of Business Development at Worksome, a compliant solution to hire and manage talent globally with automated contracts and payroll.
Other Exciting Things
1. New Social Contract shipping this week (members get early access at the bottom of this).
We’re re-building employment from the ground up.
2. Leader Portals coming up!
Next week you’ll hear from Tony Buffum, CHRO and HR expert about how HR can take the lead in digital talent models.
Teaser Quote: “HR has that seat at the table. And everybody at that table is looking directly at HR to help solve all the problems right now.”
The week after you’ll hear from Abby Forman, Director of Communications at Fiverr.
Teaser Quote: “especially when it comes to this new world of working, where everyone is remote, managers can't keep track of people's time the way that they used to. And so now, all they have to rely on is the output of that person's work”.
Thennnnn Niklas Lieb, Head of Bus Dev at Vicoland.
Teaser Quote: “We are shifting towards an economy where freelancers are able to do more complex projects and to be staffed on more important missions.”
3. Luca has been introduced to chicken and waffles. Safe to say life will never be the same.
Want To See More Content?
We’re 100% user funded, and 100% independent. The more you give, the more we can produce :)
Or if you’re super awesome!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Human Cloud to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.