I was asked the other day whether I prefer short term consulting projects or long term work. My answer was “Yes” because I see these two options converging in the near future.
We’ve already seen work evolve from the “50 years and a gold watch” of the Baby Boomer generation to the current 3-5 year tenure that is common in tech companies today. Actually, in Silicon Valley the average tenure at a job is around 13 months. What does “long term, W2 employee” mean in a world where W2 employees only hang around for a year or so? Does it still make sense to hire, onboard, and develop “full-time” employees if they are going to move on in a year? A single software product can easily take a year to fully develop from idea to production, so we’re already approaching a convergence between full-time work and hiring for a specific project. The answer is Just-In-Time (JIT) employment used in a large scale across our industry.
This is a sensitive topic because of how the US system of health care and retirement is structured around full-time W2 employment, but I think we will move to a JIT employment system first and have benefits catch up later. Many companies use contractors to augment their existing teams of full-time employees, and some companies keep contractors around for years. When the business cycle turns, the contractors are the first ones to be shown the door, but W2 employees can also see their jobs disappear when businesses pivot or hit a rough patch.
In the software startup community, where companies run lean and roles are filled only when we notice a glaring hole that should be filled yesterday, I think it makes more sense to create a core group of leaders who have the networks and connections to find specialists as the business demands. This might look like a company hiring a product strategist to help establish measurable goals and plans, a fractional Chief Financial Officer to handle investments, and a mobile team to build the initial product. As a business owner, you would be able to hire top caliber talent without the risk and expense of full time employees. When their services are no longer required, the JIT employees move on to another company who needs their services, and the business owner hires people to deliver on the next set of objectives.
As an example, if you hired a Java engineer but now you need a Scala engineer, you would find someone who is already skilled in this language rather than training an existing engineer in a new stack that he or she may not even want to learn. A product manager who prefers starting new projects can define epics and stories to finish a project and then move on to another company while someone else handles the maintenance phase. Expectations can be set upfront to avoid surprises when skill or business requirements change.
Granted, I don’t think this system works for everyone (although something similar to this has been operating for many years in the entertainment and construction industries), because some people want long term jobs with the same people, but there is nothing stopping the same people from moving on to new projects together, as engineers prefer working with specific product managers or quality engineers. Either way, I see this change as inevitable with an increasingly globalized workforce and digital workflows.
Businesses are going to do the calculations on employee cost vs output and continue to move in this direction. The best thing you can do is to prepare for the future and think about what this means for your career.