Get best of the week

Udalenka: what changed with COVID-19 and who is now even better than before

In a previous post where I talked about my path from freelance to business, I talked about how important it is to find yourself in a narrow niche, namely, at the intersection of two disciplines, or a cool skill set and a certain industry.

What to say. A month and a half of quarantine once again showed the veracity of this statement - I say this as a co-founder of a company that is looking for remote “seniors” in foreign companies and startups. At narrow specialists with good English, everything is fine. Less narrow and with less English ... Who is lucky (spoiler: almost no one was lucky).

UFO Care Minute


The pandemic COVID-19, a potentially severe acute respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (2019-nCoV), has officially been announced in the world. There is a lot of information on Habré on this topic - always remember that it can be both reliable / useful, and vice versa.

We urge you to be critical of any published information.


Official sources

, .

Wash your hands, take care of your loved ones, stay at home whenever possible and work remotely.

Read publications about: coronavirus | remote work


To whom it is bad


Dismissals are taking place in companies right now - including in large ones and even in digital. One of the leading Ukrainian agencies laid off 40% of its full-time employees, and reduced the remaining salaries by a third or 50%. I hear the same thing about other companies. The other day, a marketing manager of a large restaurant chain came to me for an interview: half of their staff were fired, and the rest were cut so much that many left.

Ukraine and Russia suffered much more than the West. Firstly, because we have a lot more business tied to the service sector than to the production of specific online products. Secondly, because in the West, business has a much larger financial pillow and there is both free aid from the state and interest-free (or low interest) loans for paying salaries.

Who cares or doesn't care


But it’s good or no difference - to many freelancers and remote workers, most of the acquaintances haven’t less work. Somewhere they delay payment, somewhere they ask for discounts, but there is no panic. Those who work on the foreign market do not see the difference at all. People from Eastern Europe working for foreign companies are, as a rule, high-class specialists who speak English and work for moderate money by Western standards. Therefore, they are valued and fired last. In addition, Western startups, which managed to attract financing, provided themselves with a salary fund for the next two to three years.

What is the conclusion from this? Yes, all the same:
English + niche skill set

And then at least ten quarantines in a row, nothing will change for you.



Another reason why smart remote workers are in demand is the attitude of employers towards them. It is changing: companies are becoming more loyal to remote. The quarantine showed that some regular positions can be sacrificed in favor of a remote woman without being tied to geography. And the demand for such specialists will only grow.

What has changed in the market?


Actually, one could talk about the transformation of the labor market back in February, before strict quarantine. The dismissal of house workers began by those companies that are good at forecasting. They realized in time that:

  • demand will fall, projects will freeze, bloated staff will hurt the company’s finances;
  • there will be more free talent on the market and it will be easier to find them (translating into the language of business is cheaper);
  • , , ;
  • , , “” . .


Over the past month, others have followed. Some, however, are forced to - because of the nature of their business. But by market transformation, I do not mean simply dismissal. If it decreases somewhere, then somewhere it will increase. Within two to three weeks of universal quarantine, the trends of changes within industries became clear. Now the emphasis is on online orders, online education and entertainment, leisure at home, productivity, telemedicine.

For example, Amazon announced the hiring of 170 thousand people, and among them are not only storekeepers and couriers. My friends from Readdle, Genesis, Toggl increase staff. We hired 9 people this week to join our team, and on our job boardEvery day, up to 10 deleted vacancies with zp are published on average from $ 50K per year. At the same time, the number of Zoom users increased one and a half times only during quarantine - up to 300 million in total, and they even refused to introduce all the new features in order to fully concentrate on infrastructure, stability and security (haha). Those. we are unlikely to die of hunger, but we will have to reconfigure and be ready for a new post-coveted world.

Generally. Once again: unique skills + English. Focus on foreign growing companies from growing markets. How to understand that a company is growing? Go to crunchbase or google this document, look, who they invest in - that means they believe, that means the company has money and that means they will expand the staff. Plus these are often cool and interesting projects. And vacancies for remote workers from 2k and above per month were and are. So if you have unique skills and a high level of self-organization, then there is no crisis associated with COVID-19 for you.

More articles:


All Articles