Czech IT Talent Availability Grows
The economic slowdown has been spreading out, and the Czech tech scene is not unaffected. Many local IT companies are laying off its egineering power, and that puts employees on the market up for grab.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affeced badly not only the health care system in the Czech Republic, but also the local economy. IT market is obvously not an excemption.
Prior the crisis, there was a shortage of developers and IT professionals on the labor market. Not surprisingly, this was the case of basically all the major tech hubs. The demand for a tech talent was high not only in Prague and Brno - the main IT-heavy locations. The new development centers of local, as well as foreign players had constantly been opening. Apparetnly, the wages were climbing up the same pace.
Despite its strong foundation, the crisis did not avoid the the IT scene either. Tech companies have clearly seen less deals finding their ways into the sales funnels. Obviouslly, hospitality-related companies have been hit the most. For example Mews, one of the fastest growing Czech startups, had to lay off a significatnt proportion of its development team. Another example is Slevomat (Gropon-like service), whose revenue is also heavily driven by the tourism industry.
A staffing agency Grafton claims a 23% drop in demand for ICT workers in the last weeks. Hynek Rychtar from Recruiting Talents (IT Talents) sais: "As a recruitment agency, we lost 80% of orders at this time, 95% of companies stopped recruiting from this number, one foreign client closed a branch in Prague, 5% of clients temporarily stopped using recruitment agencies,"
RECOVERY SHOULD BE QUICK
According to the experts consulted, some problems may not last long. Although the decline is significant, it is more of a short-term matter. It is also related to the fact that companies monitor market development and rather than preparing for an apocalypse, they wait.
Short-term, the current situation will also afftect the wages. The headhunters dont expect a large drop, but rather stagnation. Once the crisis is over, the situation will most likely return back to the pre-crisis times.
MANY ARE STILL HIRING
On the other hand, there are industries and tech companies that are growing its bsuiness and teams despite the economic decline. Those are, among others, productboard, Czech-born Sequoia-backed tool for product managers, content delivery network CDN77, or recetly established shops of US tech players, such as Pure Storage, Wrike or Outreach.
THE RIGHT TIME TO START A REMOTE TEAM
Remote engineering teams of Silicon Valley-born companies were being established in the other parts of the US, or overseas even before the crisis. The unbearable height of the wages, and talent unavailability gave many no other choice.
However, the shelter-in-place policy forced even the earlier hesitant companies operate in the remote set up. Most of them learned and successfuly implemented the processes to run the development effectivelly under these circumstances.
As a result of that, we expect to see more software companies from Silicon Valley to investigate the options to either outsource the engineering power overseas, or start a pure green-fied development shop.
For both of these options, we are here to help. Dont hesitate to reach out to:
Sources:
https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/drive-nemyslitelne-propousteji-uz-i-it-firmy-100459