The impact of the crisis on IT

Like, quarantine only won the web services, you can write the code remotely, and since..the restrictions are canceled, it means that everything ended well, there are no problems and now there will be no more.

Nevertheless, the IT industry is in crisis and it is not clear when it gets out of it.

How could everything get worse at a time when the popularity of online services has skyrocketed? How can what happens on an ordinary IT specialist? And what should he do so that the difficulties hit as little as possible?

When they say “for many things that have happened, but in IT everything remains the same”, I recall the joke “I take the money in the nightstand:

- Where do you get the money?

- In the nightstand.

- And where are they from?

- The wife is laying.

- And where did she come from?

- I give.

“Well, where are you taking them?”

• In the nightstand …

To believe that everything can remain the same here, when many others are deteriorating at once, is to consider that the IT industry has its own separate economy, in which funds arise by themselves. Let’s remember where they really come from.

Let’s start with the one lying on the surface: there are IT companies that are directly dependent on the affected industries. The Airbnb service receives income when someone settles with it, which means that with a severe decline in tourism, it also falls hard. Because of hopelessness, they tried to sell “online impressions”, but this is unlikely to help much, so the company reduced 1,900 people (25% of the entire staff). And this is just one example: IT services related to public events, catering, air travel and many others suffered

Now let’s move on to the less obvious.

There are giants like Google on which the jobs of many thousands of developers depend. Since they are not tied to tourism, and they have consumer web services (which is important in quarantine), are they all right? Not. First, giants also have affected services. When car sharing is temporarily prohibited, Yandex. Drive incurs big losses. And if developing quarantined software is not a problem, then with iron everything is much more complicated: Google has not yet introduced the Pixel 4a, which was expected in the spring.

And secondly, remember that Google is the main source of revenue.

They exist on the money of advertisers, for the most part unwritten, from stereotypical “plastic windows” to the same travel agencies. And what to expect in a situation where so many advertisers immediately fall in revenues and advertising budgets are reduced?

You say: let the advertising model be the loser, but after all, many web services receive money not from advertising, but directly from users.

Quarantined users rushed to replace offline with such services! Instead of football in the yard — online games, instead of cinemas — streaming like Netflix, instead of cafes — aggregators of food delivery, instead of strip clubs — webcam sites. They all had to get rich!

Also not necessary. Yes, the average user used online services much more than usual, but does this mean that he paid much more than usual? Many people lost confidence in future income and began to put off on a record scale, and not to waste money.

Let us then talk about life on investment and talk.

There are many unprofitable IT companies in the world. Most often these are small startups, where it is logical to exist at the expense of investors. But it’s not limited to newcomers: Uber has existed for 11 years, has grown to tens of thousands of employees and entered an IPO, but it hasn’t gone a plus. Spotify, Square, Tesla, Lyft, and Pinterest do a little better. That is, there are many IT specialists whose salaries do not come entirely from the pockets of satisfied users — a pocket of the co-owner of the company is required.

Yes, there are undoubtedly unicorns who shot and have great success, but in general, losses look much larger than wins.

But the general conclusion is this: the disaster did not happen, but if the quarantine developers continued to write code, and he continued to execute somewhere, this does not mean that he continued to bring the same amount of money.