Chapter 6: Global High-tech Talent in Times of Uncertainty

Coexisting conditions of high uncertainty and interconnectedness, which are in some respects counterintuitive (i.e. interconnectedness would under normal conditions lead to increased certainty), characterise large parts of our world today. We recently have seen many waves of COVID-19 wash over many shores across the globe, signaling yet again new changes in socio-political and socio-economic conditions. These conditions have set the stage for a much more dynamic nature of work and employment. For example, a broad array of labour reports by major consultancy firms (e.g. Boland, De Smet, Palter, & Sanghvi, 2020; Deloitte, 2016) have been advocating for new models of distributed employment and work in time and space, mainly through reduced mobility in various forms and outcomes. Researchers recently have mapped the potential deglobalisation of high tech in Anglo-Saxon countries and reflected on the breakdown of global infrastructure and the potential emergence of local talent sourcing strategies (Farndale, Thite, Budhwar, & Kwon, 2021). Still, large companies like Amazon, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Twitter are particularly in the United States (United States), ‘helping’ (e.g. through court filings) to encourage and shape more friendly and porous, national immigration policies, and in particular, mobility patterns have for a couple of decades been discussed in relation to macrolevel developments and competitiveness. In addition, Google recently offered to assist the legal cases of many employees’ life partners so that the partners could renew temporary United States visas to work in the tech sector.