Hundreds of thousands of people came to the pavement. And the end of the crisis cannot be seen. “We don’t plan to employ”

We informed about exemptions in the IT department of the Polish clothing giant. The CCC group reduced their IT team from 550 to 300 people. – Until now there has been a technological race: who implements more projects, who has better solutions. The projects did not end, did not clip, lasted too long and were too expensive – The company was explained by the president of the company Dariusz Miłek.

This is just one of the latest examples of the crisis that not only Poland, but also the global IT industry is facing. And this is by no means a crisis that began recently. It has been going on at least since 2022 and is directly related to the end of the “pandemic boom” for IT services.

, Only last year, the IT dismissal covered 152,000 specialistsin turn, in the record 2023 it was until 264 thousand full -time. Both small startups and the giants: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, and Apple were slowed.

Salesforce carried out the last reduction of full -time jobs at the beginning of 2025. It covered 1,000 people, which is 1.5 percent. frames. , exemptions were related to the change of strategy. In place of released IT specialists, Salesforce intends to employ 2,000 new sellers.

We do not plan to employ more software engineers in 2025, because we have increased our productivity by over 30 percent thanks to the agentforce service [wykorzystujące AI narzędzie służące do automatyzacji obsługi klienta – red.] and other technologies based on artificial intelligence

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The IT industry slows down

One of the reasons for the situation that the IT industry has been measured for several years was excessive employment during the Covid-19 pandemic time, which resulted from the increased demand for digital services at that time. Many companies then went to remote work. This often required the creation or development of applications and tools that would enable this form of work. IT departments swelled, and in the face of the global threat of coronavirus, no one wondered what would happen next.

Good candidates received several dozen information about work offers per month from recruiters, and each offer had a controller. […] Young “Mudia” expected senior rates. More and more candidates worked on more than one project, not always agreed with their superiors. A spectacular increase in rates attracted a new fry to the industry – not only 40 thousand. IT students a year, but also people from other industries

– Anna Szczepowska, president of Awareson, a consulting company that specializes in the outsourcing of technological services and IT recruitments.

After stabilizing the situation, however, it turned out that the number of employees exceeds current needs. This launched an avalanche of layoffs. For example, Amazon, the fourth largest company in the world in terms of market value, In 2019-2021, he doubled employment only in order to dismiss 27,000 employees in 2022 and 2023.

Slows in American technological corporations were like a bucket of cold water. Overinvestment, economic slowdown and inflation forced some companies to freeze projects. The difficult situation forced better management, prioritization of tasks and focusing on the most necessary competences

– explained Anna Szczepowska.

The lower demand for IT employees is also an effect expansion of artificial intelligence and large language models. The increase in the use of AI and automation leads to reduction of full -time jobs, especially in positions that can be replaced by technologies. For example, SAP, a programming giant employing over 100,000 people, last year decided to release about eight thousand. employees

And it is not about the fact that AI suddenly took over the duties of thousands of employees, but rather that companies want to adapt to changes and invest in new areas, primarily in generative AI. They slow down in one place to invest in another. Such actions at the same time show investors that they are still focusing on the cost discipline.

The restructuring, which many market players are currently choosing, of course, also results from macroeconomic factors. Global inflation, economic slowdown and uncertainty related to the geopolitical situation are inclined to cutting costs, including employment reduction.

Polish companies are drown in debt

In Poland, an additional factor inhibiting the development of the industry is the difficult financial situation of many companies. According to data from the BIG InfoMonitor debtors and BIK credit information database, at the end of September 2024, companies from the IT sector had overdue liabilities of PLN 320 million.

Debt in the Polish IT industry, although it does not threaten its stability, signals some challenges related to the financial liquidity of some companies. Our data indicate a clear increase in unpaid arrears in key market segments. Especially in the IT software and consulting industry, whose debt at the end of September increased by 9 percent. This may indicate a persistent tendency to grow debt, initiated by a pandemic crisis

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However, the number of candidates applying for one place is growing. According to the report “Labor market IT 2024/2025” published by No Fluff Jobs, the times have long gone when employees in Poland changed in dozens, if not hundreds of offers that tempted not only extremely high earnings, but also many other bonuses.

On average, 44 people applied for one IT job offer in 2024 (a year earlier it was 40). The biggest difference can be seen among the more experienced: last year for one MID/Regular announcement [specjalista średniego szczebla – red.] applied 37 percent more people than in 2023, au seniors [programistów posiadających duże doświadczenie – red.] This increase was 23 percent.

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Of course, in the IT industry you still earn well and even very wellbut earnings do not grow as fast as three or four years ago. As experts from NO Fluff Jobs note, in 2024 specializations arrived in which the salaries fell.

“At the same time, where there are increases, one can only talk about a few percent. A dozen are rare, and yet there were years, where 15-20 percent up was standard. Thus, we are closer to the conclusion that the remuneration policy has recently been aimed at maintaining rates” – concludes the authors of the report.