Is this risk management?

After laying off around half of Twitter’s workforce in the first 10 days of owning the company, and allegedly dismissing staff for disloyalty and talking back on Twitter and Slack, new CEO Elon Musk is reportedly trying to get some of them to come back on the job.

It’s a confusing and tense time for tech employees, especially as other large companies, like Amazon and Meta, are considering or have already begun widespread layoffs and sweeping cuts to their budgets. Being asked to return just days after receiving a pink slip only adds to the uncertainty.

IT Brew spoke to Chicago-area technical recruiter Alexander Finch. Here are his four things to remember if you’re laid off and asked to return.

1. Judge your risk tolerance. If you get laid off and asked to come back, it’s likely the environment in the office and the company is going to be different than it was before. Any company doing layoffs, Finch told IT Brew, is likely to have a “real or imagined budget crunch” that can have negative effects on company culture. “But the pros are, with less people, there actually is a lot more opportunity for advancement,” Finch said. “There are going to be less people in line for those senior positions, for managerial positions, [so] you will get to cut your teeth working on a lot more.”
2. Don’t lose sleep over the layoffs. Engineers and IT pros who work for companies like Twitter and Meta might feel some responsibility to consumers and users after they leave. That’s normal, but staffers should remember that they don’t control the company’s decisions.

Read more here.—EH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected] or DM @EoinHiggins_ on Twitter.

A number of the over 700,000 open cybersecurity positions have requirements that make little mention of tech:

• “Excellent oral and written communication skills,” read a recent listing for a cybersecurity analyst position.
• The ability to “look at problems pragmatically to provide insight, ideas, and help set priorities on how to execute accordingly,” a post looking for a cybersecurity engineer reads.
• The capacity to “convey complex technical security concepts to technical and non-technical audiences, including executives,” company seeking penetration testers requested.

IT leaders are looking not just for hard, fast expertise, but soft skills, too, like knowing how to communicate and interact with others.

“For a number of years, cybersecurity teams have been building up their technical capabilities,” said Joe Nocera, partner leader for cyber risk and regulatory marketing at PwC. “They’ve been looking for things like analytics. They’ve been looking for knowledge of certain technologies, particularly things like identity and access management. But for the first time ever, we’re seeing the importance of really understanding the risk to the business, and therefore getting cybersecurity professionals that can speak the language of the business.”

Now cutting, now hiring. The “PwC Pulse Survey: Cautious to confident” had seemingly opposing findings: Companies are both looking for—and letting go of—employees.

• 81% of CHROs indicated that they’re reducing their workforce. (Plenty of tech companies this month already have.)
• 44% of executives still plan to drive growth by hiring talent with specific skill sets—most notably the kind required to defend against cyberattacks, an area that 52% of surveyed executives are “very concerned” about.

That cyber talent, however, has lately involved more than just understanding standards and knowing one’s way around a SOC, SIEM, or SOAR.

Read about it here.—BH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected] or DM @BillyHurls on Twitter.

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 96%. That’s the success rate of Intel’s deepfake detector, FakeCatcher, according to the company. (Gizmodo)

Quote: “This is not a phishing attempt.”—Elon Musk in an email to employees, restating his offer of voluntary 3-months severance (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: What law enforcement needs to know about the metaverse. (Europol)

Subscribe: Become a personal finance expert with Money Scoop—the free newsletter that makes you smarter about your money. Check it out.

Build on GitHub: Every company is a software company now, and with over 90 million developers, GitHub is the place for anyone from anywhere to build anything. Find a plan that works for your team here.

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}