Virtualization
The “socializing” of the internet has been an influence in the growing virtualization of the American worker, especially in tech, where the laborer carries their skills and reputation from company to company, rather than foster these skills within a company for the long-term. This is also due to the tech industry’s high creative destruction, where companies can spring up and disappear just as quickly. Maybe it’s better to think of companies not as companies, but, rather, projects. A more temporary, momentary, meeting of minds in order to achieve certain goals. If it fails, it fails, if it succeeds, then it succeeds.
But what is constant during these times are the people that comprise these companies, and the skills and network which they bring with them and, more importantly, leave when they go towards another opportunity. These are the skills and experiences that will be important commodities, which are being highlighted more and more now that your drunk-boy/girl picture from last week is becoming more and more associated with your online identity, and the leveling of online information architecture and social recommendations and reputations make technological solutions more possible which will depend on your online networks.
These days, you may have a company placed within Palo Alto, outsourcing its engineering team within India, temping its mid-management teams with solutions like TeamLease, managing the information infrastructure via Saas-solutions, crowd-sourcing its marketing initiatives, offering outplacement services via cloud-based solutions like RiseSmart, telecommuting work from home, etc etc. The emphasis being more towards building a fluid, dynamic, highly-reactive, sort of business, rather than a brick-and-mortar, long-term company. Maybe the idea of a company building will become a relic.
The best bet for being competitive in this world will rest on three important pillars:
- Who you know (network)
- What you’ve done (experience)
- What you know (expertise)
Each one of these pillars is heavily influenced by today’s “personal brand”, where you online identity is a part of your arsenal when it comes to landing that job. It works just as it did before, but today the avenues are more global, within a world that is increasingly on the level, more biased towards hard-science workers well-versed within highly technical concepts, whether tech workers or doctors, niched within their areas of expertise towards aspects that are critical to business/institutional needs in the long-term. Would you rather be a laid off general manager, or a laid off general manager experienced with cloud-based technology, off-shored dev teams, with a strong personal network comprised of many of the heavy-weights and engineers within the industry of your work?
