The beginning of 2020 brought an Epidemic that no one expected. In a very short time, we were deprived of the opportunity to leave the house freely, in many cases we even started working in the privacy of our homes. The epidemic situation disturbed the economy, leading to the crisis. Many industries have been deprived of a chance to earn money, but there are also industries whose profits have increased several times.
One of them is the IT industry.
The process of transferring business to the Internet has accelerated as a result of the current situation. Ultimately we had to get used to the new way of functioning, e.g. shopping or learning, which is now mostly done online. Our habit to use the Internet has increased – as many as 86% of Poles admitted that they use the Internet more than before, as shown by the recent LoveBrands Relations survey. For many companies, the digital revolution has exposed the problems of moving to the home office, but for IT companies, it hasn’t been a problem! The IT industry did not have any difficulties with sending employees to remote work. According to a study by Devire, as many as 86% of programmers have the option of working remotely.
Recent events have led to a shift not only in the work format, but also in wages, while other companies struggle to stay afloat, IT specialists are seeing an increase in earnings. Research on the recruitment platform for the IT industry No Fluff Jobs showed that from January on B2B contracts among employees at the Senior level, the average salary increased by 5.5%, and on an employment contract by 4%. On the other hand, employees at the Mid level in the case of B2B contracts received on average 8% more, while in the case of an employment contract the increase was only 2%. Of course, this is related to the amount of work they are overburdened with. Despite the fact that in Poland IT positions have been dominated by men for years, over the last decade women have been increasingly boldly entering the ranks of programmers and specialists, according to the BulldogJob study, they are currently 10%. As many as 25% of IT specialists are under 25 years of age, 15% are people over 36 years of age. Therefore, there is now a shortage of people in positions such as an e-commerce expert, digital manager, business intelligence specialist, UX designer or also a Big Data specialist, application developer, infrastructure specialist, automation engineer and business analyst.
As you can see, the IT industry is not going to slow down.
The coronavirus pandemic put us in an unpleasant situation. Many industries have suffered a lot and are unable to function normally, provide services, and help. Therefore, if possible, companies from the Modern Technology sector decided to help. It must be admitted – the IT industry is now indispensable, regardless of whether it is about internet products or services. Technological companies wanting to help financially support, for example, the medical sector or donate their products to many health care institutions. The Blulog company promised all interested institutions sets of devices for measuring temperature and humidity. To limit visits to offices, the Ministry of Health, in cooperation with IBM Polska, launched a virtual assistant available on the website patient.gov.pl. The Ministry of Digitization, in cooperation with Asseco Poland, is trying to accelerate the introduction of regulations enabling video verification, which is badly needed to run the electronic signature. It is worth mentioning the education system – Asseco Data Systems, together with the operator of the National Cloud, has made available an educational platform for universities that operate remotely free of charge.
The pandemic has also sparked a trend that will dominate in the coming months is artificial intelligence that is proving to be an effective solution. It is scalable, efficient, easily available, and at the same time it can be adapted to the requirements of almost any enterprise. Another trend is automation, which opens up a number of new opportunities for companies. Cost reduction, service time reduction and accurate data analysis. Cybersecurity is another trend in IT not only for 2021, but also the most important one, both from the point of view of the customer and companies. Now, however, it is understood as more than just an antivirus on a work computer. The emphasis on their proper preparation, testing and finally implementation will grow with each new feature introduced to the application, especially banking, government and leasing. As you can see, modern solutions encourage companies to develop their online services.
Regardless of the solutions chosen, the ability to adapt remains the path to success. Being prepared for the unpredictable and enabling changes to necessary systems will surely prove crucial not only this year, but also throughout the near future.