Serbian IT sector hit with massive layoffs amid worldwide crisis

The effects of a worldwide crisis have hit Serbia and the whole region, and layoffs were a necessary answer to unfavourable macroeconomic circumstances, HTEC group corporate communications director Katarina Urošević told EURACTIV.

A wave of layoffs has been plaguing the IT sector worldwide, with the largest companies firing thousands of employees. Serbian company HTEC fired around 200 people in a single day, which has IT workers worried about the security of the industry. The number of IT-related job ads has also seen a steady decline since late 2022.

“As a necessary answer to unfavourable macroeconomic circumstances, we have reorganised our business units and optimised the number of engineers who had not, for a period of time, been allocated to projects and whose skills and abilities were not, unfortunately, up to the growing fields that we foresee,” said Urošević.

Marko Vučetić, PR manager of one the most popular jobs website in Serbia, told EURACTIV that the massive layoff has IT workers fearing the future.

“However, we could have seen this coming, because a number of experts had been ‘benched’ for a while with no projects. Outsourcing companies have been hit the hardest, while companies with proprietary products are faring a little better through the crisis”, Vučetić of “HelloWorld” told EURACTIV.

There is, he underlined, a positive side to this.

“This is an opportunity for smaller companies to obtain quality experts, but also other companies that aren’t in the IT sector,” Vučetić said.

“The organic growth of the IT industry in Serbia was expected to normalise at some point. The number of ads in the first quarter of 2023. is 50% lower, but we hope that this caution will not last for long”, he concluded.

Đorđe Vukotić, director of sales and operations of jobs platform “Joberty”, told EURACTIV that there is no isolated cause for the crisis.

“The first signs could be seen in the United States in 2022, and seeing as how the global economy is a connected system, the wave has hit the region as well. Startups in the late investment stages have been hit, as have many projects of companies. This has led to layoffs or scaling down of projects in which regional IT companies are participating”, Vukotić told EURACTIV.

“The last year has shown us that even IT can fall on hard times, and is not immune to worldwide events. I believe that this will be a sort of a learning experience for future strategic decisions”, he concluded.

(EURACTIV.rs | Jelena Jevtić)