Technology and work: worst balance since the beginning of the pandemic – 02/19/2023 – Market

The balance of 427 hires in December 2022 was the worst mark for IT professionals and technicians since May 2020, when the Brazilian labor market felt the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a surplus of 1,762 layoffs.

The data are contained in the Caged (General Register of Employed and Unemployed) — government record on movements in the formal labor market.

Although the number for the sector is positive, it represents a drop of 88.3% compared to the 3,645 new jobs in December 2021. In comparison with November 2022, the cut was even greater: 89.6%, Companies usually review their personnel costs at the end of the year.

The stock of IT professionals grew by 29.6% between December 2022 and January 2020, when New Caged began to account for the coming and going of these jobs. The total numbers of jobs are released once a year in Rais (Annual List of Social Information).

During the period in which all non-essential enterprises had to adapt to the digital operation, the Ministry of Labor began to register two new occupations: information technology test analyst and information technology solutions architect.

The demand for technology professionals was so high that young people working in the remote model began to resign in the country in search of better working conditions, similar to what happened in the United States and was called the “great resignation”. A study by Firjan (Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro) captured this movement.

Throughout 2022, companies took the initiative. In Brazil, road transport startup Buser announced a 30% cut in its payroll in December. After the purchase of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk at the end of October, the social network reduced its workforce from 7,000 to 2,000 employees – in Brazil, there is no longer even a communication representative.

Such as Sheet showed, in 2023, the shutdowns continue — the report accounts for at least 2,600 this year. After announcing the cut of 12,000 employees around the world, Google, for example, dismissed 70 employees from its Brazilian offices.

Executives, in general, claim the instability of the global economy to downsize the operation.

A leaked letter from investment fund manager TCI to Alphabet, the holding company that owns Google, showed pressure from shareholders for technology companies to increase profit margins. One way to do this is to cut personnel costs; another, cut wages.

Employees at other big tech companies who have had confirmed global layoffs privately say they live anxiously about the possibility of layoffs.

Data such as the 2021 Brasscom (Brazilian Association of Information and Communications Technology Companies) survey, which estimated a demand of 797,000 technology talents between 2021 and 2025, no longer correspond to the current reality, according to economists interviewed by the report.

Caged data show, however, that some careers are more protected in this period of instability. Among computer application engineers, who design computer programs and other information security technologies, November 2022 was the only month since 2020 in which there were fewer hires than layoffs — there were just two more shutdowns.

Among IT professionals, computer engineers are also the ones with the highest average salary on admission: R$ 13,208, according to a survey by Firjan. The group had the biggest rise in stock considering the changes measured by Caged since the beginning of 2020 —from 7,775 professionals to 17,471 (growth of 124.7%).

According to the vice-coordinator of the Computer Engineering course at USP in São Carlos, Simone do Rocio Senger de Souza, students in this graduation have in-depth training in computing and electronics, including design, testing and development of software systems, embedded systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, and microelectronics.

“These students can specialize in subjects of interest such as high-performance computing systems, mobile robots, communication, mobile computing and data science”, he says.

She points out that the careers classified by the industry as computer engineering are not always occupied by students of the homonymous course. “There may be people who come from computer science, information systems or even other engineering fields.”

Graduated in civil engineering also from USP in São Carlos in 2018, Lucas Neuhaus, 28, from Rondonia, decided to make a career transition to the software development area in 2020. He even enrolled in the information systems course at the same university, but managed to enter the market before completing the second graduation and never finished it.

Since 2021, Neuhaus has gone through three companies, all foreign. He says he prefers to work for companies in other countries because he is guaranteed to continue working remotely and is paid in dollars, quoted at more than R$ 5 in recent months.

Today, the engineer works as a “front-end” developer —responsible for the interface between the application and the user— for the delivery startup Lazzy, based in New York. “The biggest challenge was overcoming the imposter syndrome. I thought it would take years to be able to act on an equal footing with a professional from abroad. Now, I realize that I may have the solution to the problem.”

Although he works in a function covered by computer engineering, Neuhaus is not accounted for by Novo Caged because he is not part of the formal Brazilian market.

The situation is not so optimistic for network administrators and industrial machine programming technicians. This last profession saw its stock of CLT employees fall by 1.4% since 2020, while the former grew by just 0.4%.

Albert Ribeiro, 28, graduated from the Computer Networks course at Uninabuco, became a self-taught “back-end” developer —a professional who takes care of the infrastructure of a website or application. He lost, however, his formal job as a senior programmer in January. Since then, he has been looking for a new position in the country or abroad.

“I prefer to continue working in Brazil, for Brazilian companies, but I have no illusions that the national market will respect and value those who make that choice thinking about the country they live in. When CEOs think they should lay off en masse, they will do it, and the class is not united to defend itself”, says Ribeiro.

Although the developer from Pernambuco has participated in six selection processes in recent weeks, he has already heard negative responses from local companies. Another four processes are in progress.

According to Ribeiro, who has already worked as an outsourced service provider, his predilection for a CLT vacancy aims to avoid communication problems with the contractors. In addition, software developer activity does not qualify as MEI (individual micro-entrepreneur). “If you want to work as a legal entity, you have to fit in correctly so you don’t have problems with the Federal Revenue.”

In general, IT professionals with higher education were hired more than mid-level technicians. The increases were registered between January 2020 and December 2022, respectively, 32.1% and 25.8%.

Even so, edtech Trybe, which offers professional education courses, signals confidence in the so-called professions of the future by maintaining its model of shared success. In this form of payment, students only need to pay the monthly fees after getting a job with a salary of more than R$ 3,000.

According to the analyst at the investment fund Avenue Guilherme Zanin, there is still a large shortage of technical professionals in smaller companies. “These businesses don’t have as much resources as the big ones, but they would like to have greater efficiency in their processes”, says Zanin.

This was the case of engineer Nicholas Baraldi, fired by Rappi in January, as reported by Sheet. Earlier this month, he landed a job in data engineering at InfoPrice, which offers business intelligence services to retailers.