Three sacred cows in the employee-employer relationship that it's time to slaughter - voila! Marketing and digital

Satisfied employees in the office (Photo: ShutterStock)

From the great crisis of 2008 until these days, the high-tech industry has largely been a workers' market, with a small stumble in the first wave of the Corona virus in 2020. The workers set the tone as well as the standard, and the employers fought to recruit workers, even more than they fought to raise capital .

The battle for every worthy technological employee was at the core, and at the forefront were the special forces of the human resources departments, or in their more trendy name which was produced somewhere in early 2021, the People departments.

A great country in their great "high-tech" skit, they couldn't have phrased it better, in the words of the character of the high-tech entrepreneur, Nadir Akerman - "When we talk about the product, we talk about the people, while he marks the English letter P with his hands During an online presentation to foreign investors.

2023 looks different, both in the industry and in the industry.

Two waves of downsizing were carried out across the industry, both at the corporations and tech giants and at the small companies and start-ups, and it seems that in the heroic battle between Product and People, the commercial companies remembered that they are profit and loss business units, and chose Product.

The tide turned and the high-tech industry returned to being an employer's market.

Norms of employer-employee relations will no longer look the same, at least not in 2023. So which three sacred cows from 2022 can and should already be slaughtered?

First sacred cow - "Society is like a family"

Maybe we were comfortable, maybe we were used to it, but a company is not a family.

A family does not fire family members in economic crises and does not perform economic efficiency at their expense.

In fact, a family is the exact opposite of a commercial company, it is in most cases altruistic, while the company, quite often, has stakeholders abroad, between whom and altruism there is a deep chasm called "an accounting balance". The employees and candidates for jobs in the year 2023 will no longer see the company as a

family , they will return to seeing it as an employer, an accumulation of rights, duties, requirements and permits, at the end of which various rewards are received, starting with salary and possibly even bonuses, and ending with professional experience that can be added to the resume, a personal challenge, an occupational interest and usually also a social one.

Chapter Two - "Academic education in the social sciences is a gateway to the soft professions of high-tech"

It is true that there are no glass ceilings in the world that determination and perseverance cannot break, and the industry is full of excellent examples of this, but in the reality of 2023 there will be fewer employee welfare managers, happy hour producers and community managers.

The emphasis in the limited resources will often be on developers and engineers, and positions such as product manager will also prioritize engineers over graduates in psychology, sociology, geography, history, gender, political science, communication, governance and sustainability.

A bachelor's degree student in social work, who does not intend to work in the sacred and necessary profession but does not find social work rewarding enough, and dreams of becoming a high-tech product manager, will probably have to strive to change his specialization in his studies as early as possible, and not wait until the end of his degree to try to qualify for junior positions in the high-tech industry.

In most cases, a student of industrial engineering and management will bypass him in the selections, and there are quite a few such students in the academy today.

In exactly the same way, selections for the position of parliamentary assistant in the government offices will usually give priority to graduates of government studies and international relations, over students of computer science, mathematics and physics.

Third sacred cow - blue and white employment

The first rule in every folk folklore of almost every nation or culture in the world, and also in Judaism, is "nice demands, nice fulfills".

Throughout economic history, Israeli industrialists have been proud of their preference for blue and white work and the country's produce.

An Israeli industrialist has always preferred to hire an expert from the university and the Technion over an expert from abroad, and the same goes for suppliers. There has always been a preference to purchase blue and white industrial products than to import identical and cheaper products from abroad, even if they are older and have a higher reputation.

Even the IDF preferred to develop the blue and white Israeli Merkava tanks, rather than importing American Abrahams tanks with government aid funds, or purchasing British Pancher or German Leopard battle tanks.

Likewise, the high-tech industry instills confidence in the Israeli worker, because as long as he is a software developer or an ordinary engineer, he will not lack work and employers will always prefer him with a handsome gross salary + cost of employer, social security, funds, coffers, ten-bis, parking and a host of incentives and rewards ( some are mandatory and some are mandatory) than a foreign technological worker who can be hired through freelancer sites such as Upwork and Fiverr without employer-employee relations and without vacation, sickness and notice days.

Let's go back to "nice demands and nice fulfills", many of us prefer to buy cheap foreign products than blue and white Israeli products, usually due to price considerations.

It could be a tomato from Turkey that is sold for half a shekel less than Israeli agricultural produce, foreign household workers from labor contractors, or fashion brands abroad that are profitable for us to order from online.

There is no reason to be surprised when Israeli hi-tech companies, many of which have raised capital from foreign investors, will prefer foreign technological workers to blue-and-white developers and engineers.

In the end, the laws of the market are stronger than the status quo.

In an era of resource efficiency, the transaction at a high price with accompanying mandatory additions, as required in the local market, are not really a guarantee of success, especially not in companies whose boards of directors include representatives of funds and investors from all over the world and whose internal e-mail traffic in the organization is in English.

Ultimately, business companies are profit and loss units and are thus slightly different from institutional organizations.

In conclusion

The year 2023 will bring with it a lot of changes, both in the employment norms and in employee-employer relations.

Adjustments in the labor market, especially in the high-tech industry, are required from both sides - the employees and the employers.

A company needs working personnel no less than the employee needs a job.

The question is, what are the adjustments that the industry is required to make during the year, and how will it do so?

Rotem Mi-Tal is the CEO of Asgard Systems, which specializes in artificial intelligence applications.

• Marketing and digital

• Recruitment and career

Tags

• The labor market

• Working

• High tech

• the employment market

• Personnel

• Human Resources

• human capital