Anecdotally I am hearing about the firms slowly hiring back few people, but I also hear that they bring on board completely new people, and this is important, even though the employees fired during the crisis are willing to accept a substantial salary cut. Meaning the money is not the decisive factor in the new hiring. Here are some reason for this strange phenomenon:
- People ascend to the upper management due to a political skill not a technical skill. Many within the upper management don’t really know or appreciate what it takes to produce. If the upper managers had their way, they would outsource every single one of the geeks, especially because the proximity of the skilled workers is the inevitable and peculiar reminder about their own incompetence.
- People who rise to a political power are uncomfortable around the bystanders who know the history and know where the skeletons are buried. (When Stalin became a God he killed all his childhood friends from the small Georgian village. Stalin couldn’t stand a thought of people who remembered him as a little pisher.) This is particularly true for the people who were fired. Often during a crisis the upper managers behave unethically and they don’t want any witnesses.
- Many technical workers precede the upper management in a company. A hiring process is an opportunity to bring new employees who have the complete allegiance of a “made man”.
File this under Dunning–Kruger effect.