Collateral Damage Control

The cold calculations of the non-targeted life and property that may be affected by military action.

The above definition involves several presumptive concepts, such as who is entitled or not to approve the action after reviewing the collateral damages. Usually, those decisions affect persons and properties in enemy territory. Sometimes, those actions, intentionally or not, also affect fellow nationals and their property, health, welfare, or security.

In pandemic times, business models are suddenly disrupted. The collateral damages following the executive actions, go beyond the immediate sight and bite deeply in a chain reaction of collateral victims and property.

For example, a well respected and conservative business model, build or buy office space for rent, faces a large number of contract cancellations. It can be worse if employees cannot return to the offices soon. Work From Home (WFH) looks pretty good to embrace the “New Normal,” however, the number of indirect employees around this industry alone is enormous.

Just think about the building management, security, cleaning services, maintenance, and so on. Take a second look at the providers of personal services, materials, and tools needed by the previous group, also, take a third look at the producers of such materials and tools, add up the number of employees at risk to be fired or suspended within this industry only. Scary.

What is happening to the traditional jobs in the pandemic

Despite the obvious ones (Jobs that require personal interaction in closed spaces, large groups, or in general, any contagion risk), there are a large number of traditional jobs being eliminated or replaced altogether with functions.

How can this be?. Let’s use a well-known example to illustrate the overall idea.

High-level security personnel is not only scarce but expensive and quite volatile. Security professionals must complete several tough trainings, develop a wide-base hands-on experience, dominate a large number of topics that touch other specializations, and face a complicated equilibrium between his life and the job.

Among other specialties in the security menu, the “Data Center Security.” Professional is considered a technician rather than an engineer, no matter how complex or demanding it can be, how wide the required skills or how challenging it can be to keep pace with ever-changing technologies, procedures, and operating procedures.

Outsourcing first and Managed Services afterward, decimated the job opportunities, replaced the job with the function of “Data Center Security Management.” And finally, a big chunk of the local workloads went to the cloud computing services. The pessimists believe that the Data Center will eventually disappear as a physical entity within the enterprises. (Not my opinion)

A similar path (to follow the example only) happens to the network architects, as networks are becoming commodities. This term used initially used to denominate raw materials with minimal or no added value at all is applied now to anything that becomes “common.” Despite the elegant art behind the network design in a building, switches became commodities as the customers replaced classical switching with Software Defined Networks. WAN design (although it is undeniable that is there) is replaced with SD-WAN.

Even the stable and untouchable kingdom of Storage Area Networks (SAN) is replaced with SAN virtualization and SD-Storage.

The list is old and large but is not only marked with disappearing specialties like the Unified communications take over of the PABX. Some functions like server management require fewer and fewer engineers as virtualization and automation allows a single engineer to manage hundreds if not thousands of virtual servers around the globe with a single console.

A nostalgic, sad, and defeated attitude is useless.

Can the virtual survive without the physical?

That is a catchy question since we all know that behind every cloud service, there is a complex physical infrastructure that allows the cloud in the first place. So, Who is taking care of it?.

Not cloud customers. That is the crucial point about it.

Therefore, if a traditional engineer is not aware of this crucial point and has not a clue about getting a job in the middle of the pandemic, there are few chances to rip all the effort of building such a complex body of knowledge in the next decade or so.

Once this concept is understood, it is valid for all the rest of the collateral damages of progress, pandemic, economic crisis, political uncertainty, and everything that stimulates change and innovation.

The answer is not, by the way, to denial change, but to embrace it, being brave and honest even to admit that it may require you to forget all your professional life. You may leave aside your most beloved technical accomplishments, your proudest achievements, your highest certifications, and your current degree.

In military action, collateral damage is not a choice for the victims. However, those indirectly affected by the pandemic, really have a chance, a decision to make and a very, very tight timing to do it: Reinvention.

Are you ready to escape from the collateral damage?

It does not take too much to understand the “Employability Index.”, use a specialized site like LinkedIn to establish the rough basis of the desired job and the average skills needed to apply successfully to a focused opportunity.

The “Employability Index” is inversely proportional to your “Skill Gaps,” meaning the more skill gaps you have, the less employable you are. Quite simple.

Some skill gaps may seem overwhelming, especially if you have not prior expertise, even in a similar subject. Given that you know what cloud-based services are, it is not a guarantee that you understand clustering or Kubernetes. (These are not easy subjects).

So you must start from the less choking needed skill and go upwards. Remember something about tight timing?. Please keep it in your mind.

Then, here we are, in the middle of a pandemic, already unemployed, probably fearing for our current fragile job or already warned of a threshold date when we will be fired. Fine. Take a look at the available time and resources and make an investment plan (of time and some money) to tackle these skill gaps.

Currently, you can address several skill gaps in parallel, can find most of these in the same job seeker app of your preference. I personally like LinkedIn (paid subscription), where you can see from guidance to complete courses that can lead to official certifications.

There are some temptations in the middle of the road: Please open your mind and try not to favor the skills that “you like” instead of the “skills that you need.” So better make a table, a simple table, and stick to it all times.

Do not forget to add the acquired skills to your profile, and you will see how your chances of getting employed again or get a new and better job, increase. Some applications measure the employer-provided skills with yours and let you know how close or far you are compared to others. Remember, this comparison is only informative and does not mean that if you have all the required skills, the job is yours!

A reinvention of the world as we knew it

Before we prepare for the so-called “new normal,” please be aware that we already are in “the new normal.”

The “Post-Pandemic” world will be different in several ways, no doubt about it. But most changes will reflect what we see today, H1CY2020, and there are few issues, even if some become significant in the future, frankly, will not be in our hands to rule for or against these. So let’s better focus elsewhere.

We already changed the way we work, live, get groceries and medicines, go to school or, exercise. Why would we expect that our professions will remain unchanged?. Look around: Reinvention is everywhere, the poorest the country, the most awesome the reinventions.

Take, for example, the freezing of the H-1B visas in the USA. That’s a massive opportunity to do freelance remote work, at a better wage than H-1B applicants for sure. So prepare to dive in collaborative teamwork, develop the skills and tools you need to do so, read, educate yourself about it, and above all: do it purposely.

There are a lot of challenges ahead. Think of yourself as one of the persons that will be devoted to solving future problems instead of someone waiting to be told what to do next because the latter will be the collateral victims of a game-changing pandemic.

Finally, a reinvention of the world is only possible with a reinvention of the producers, the women, and men that will support the only constant in the professional world: Change.