THE STORY BEHIND THE NUMBERS Despite the frightening reality of an accelerating string of five-figure layoff notices, the sky isn’t falling. As is so often the case in tech, there’s context beyond the numbers. And in this case, the context of the broader jobs situation across the tech and tech-adjacent spaces tells us a bit of a different story. Much of what we’re seeing is less dire-clouds-gathering-on-the-horizon than it is a structural realignment as we slowly emerge from the pandemic. Indeed, as COVID first took hold in March 2020, many tech companies found themselves...

BUY OR BUILD? One of the most important decisions any organization must make when deciding on a given software solution or project is whether they can buy it off the shelf or should be engaging developers to create custom software. The decision is a complex one, and each approach has advantages and disadvantages that must be carefully weighed by a broad range of stakeholders. Back-end systems that support core business functions must have the features and capacity to accommodate current and future needs, Similarly, end-user systems must incorporate the ideal set of features to support...

1 – ELON MUSK BUYS TWITTER This is easily the most impactful tech story of the year – and the one tech story with the most potential to impact society at large. What started out as something of a lark by the world’s (now second) richest man – Musk started buying up shares in Twitter in March. He then offered to buy the rest of the company for $44 billion in April – and by October it had morphed into something infinitely more chaotic and unpredictable. This train wreck – or perhaps more appropriately, rocket explosion – is something we frankly should have seen coming. And it...

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Critics of staff augmentation often say it’s a fancy term for outsourcing. They couldn’t be more wrong. It’s easy to see why some folks think it’s convenient to toss staff augmentation and outsourcing into the same proverbial bucket. Both of them could be viable options for companies looking to boost bandwidth – without having to activate their own human resources department to bring resources on-board full-time and permanently. This can be especially resonant for IT departments challenged by historic shortages of key technology skills – including project...