Adaptability
“Survival of the fittest” is the phrase coined by Herbert Spencer when he started visualizing his economic theories, which align with Darwin’s biological and evolutionary theories.
In 2000, while I was in my final year of college, there was a huge lottery for the college graduates fueled by the internet boom in the advanced countries. Because of that, many multinational IT organizations were hiring fresh grads from colleges at a high rate in India. I was one among the many lucky ones to directly get the job through campus interviews and was placed in the job as soon as I graduated college to work as a software engineer with an attractive salary package.
We were treated like we were gifted in the office and were provided with the latest technologies on the market. As the days went by, we were deployed into internal product developments to sharpen our skills, so that when there is a need, we will be sent to the USA or the UK or any of the other places we all dreamed to get our flight tickets for.
September 11, 2001 – 9/11 – The attack on the Twin Towers in New York by terrorists, was an unimaginable event for all of mankind at the time, and impacted everybody in the world. This was one of the major factors that triggered the internet bubble to burst and suddenly, all the multinationals needed to start chopping their workforce to control their expenses.
During this time I saw many of my senior colleagues, who had a lot of IT experience and were really good in mainframes, but unfortunately, they didn’t learn the latest technologies at that time but still thought companies should take care of them. That didn’t last for long and most of them were asked to leave the company because they were a big expense to the organization and mainly because they were unable to adapt to the new technology trends immediately.
When Apple introduced the iPod, which could store 1000’s of songs in a very small device, this disruption put a lot of music player giants to the ground because they were not able to adapt to the change.
Nokia was a popular phone until 2007. When iPhones were introduced, the whole company went out of business because they did not introduce a successful, new phone. Blackberry’s and Windows’s phone tried to adapt for a long time, but unable to compete, many divisions were closed.
Similar things happened and continued to happen in all the fields – whoever was not able to adapt to the environment became outdated and vanished.
“Where there is a danger, a rescuing element grows as well”
– Friedrich Hölderlin
Microsoft, a great company for years, started to go downhill around 2008. When new CEO Satya Nadella took over, he quoted “Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation”. Within a few years under his leadership, he brought several changes that led the company back to its high glory by adapting to the latest trends in every aspect as well as delivering for today’s needs and the future.
“Survival of the fittest”:
Theorized more than 150 years ago and it still holds good today.
Adaptability is a very important skill everyone must possess to continue to have a good ride throughout our lifetime. The only way you can adapt is through consistent learning and by evaluating positions regularly.