"Today job autonomy outruns traditional labor-management system!"
With the beginning of industrialization, enterprises began to think about how to control labor productivity. At the end of the 19th century, a 26-year-old head of large-scale production, Frederick Taylor, comes to the conclusion that work cannot be interesting by definition, and therefore workers must be stimulated and controlled. This is how the "carrot and stick" principle appeared. In the 21st century, the innovation sector is starting to play an important role. In developed countries, more than 70% of new vacancies are already associated with heuristic activities. It means that now to obtain new results non-standard solutions are required.
Researchers from the Harvard Business School noticed that the carrot-and-stick method works for routine activities, but is absolutely inappropriate for creative activities and can even be destructive.
Can an employee's creativity benefit the employer? The example of Google will be the answer. Previously, they allowed employees to devote 20% of their working time to work on projects that were not related to their current tasks. At some point, the number of cases created during that time transformed into more than 50% of all projects of the corporation. This is how Gmail, Google News, and the advertising service AdSense were invented.
Freedom to choose where to work also helps increase productivity. The coronavirus pandemic has forced many companies to let employees work from literally anywhere. Today, many of them conclude that it did not worsen but improved the creativity and productivity of employees. The views on the organization of work were revised. Good examples may be such tech giants as Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter. Moreover, Twitter has recently announced that it will forever retain the right to work outside the office for employees.
Another important aspect of autonomy is the ability to choose the people we work with on a particular task. Of course, it often appears to be very difficult to get such an opportunity. In the majority of cases (this is especially true for the initial stages of a career) you have to join the already formed teams. However, developing a freedom-of-choice approach can create the conditions for self-organizing teams that can deliver truly amazing results, the benefits of which can go far beyond a particular company.
The way of life, traditional for the 20th century, considers an employee only as a human resource that needs constant external stimulation. The changes in the economy of the 21st century today make us question these methods of organizing the employee-employer relationship.
The innovation sector of the economy and especially the IT sector requires not to quickly carry out a predetermined sequence of steps, but the ability to propose a non-standard solution, which basically associates with creative approaches.
"Speedrunning to Web-Junior"
The other part of IT ENTRANCE 2020 we took part in were workshops. Solvd's front-end developers Dmitry Mishin and Victor Mitskevich discussed with attendees the hottest topics connected with proper IT career starting:
- Common mistakes of beginning and self-taught developers
- Basic knowledge required for starting a web development career
- Must-have technologies to know and priority in studying them
At the very beginning of 2021, we are launching a web development training course. Solvd has arranged a dedicated JavaScript/React program with further hiring opportunities for the best students. More information and the registration form can be found right here.
