Microsoft Should Buy WeWork and Merge It with LinkedIn
Matching talent with opportunity on a global scale is a lucrative business. Microsoft is best positioned to take over this niche.
Our World Next.Gen
A popular quote says: “Talent is equally distributed around the world, opportunity is not”. But the quote talks about the past, not the future. The past was filled with global inequality and unfairness. What does the future hold? Can the tech companies change it for better?
An imbalance prompts an arbitrage. A chance to make the world a better, fairer place, is also a chance to make money.
How exactly do we want to tackle the talent/opportunity imbalance? There are 3 major scenarios to address:
- Access to education: bright kids from Bangkok and Palo Alto should have equal chances to enroll in the world’s top universities.
- Access to jobs: smart engineers from Istanbul and London shouldn’t be treated differently on their way to employment in the world’s best companies.
- Access to capital: disruptive entrepreneurs from Cairo and Berlin should have equal opportunities to raise money from the top investors.
This is a two-way road. Universities are constantly looking for young geniuses, tech companies spend millions to recruit the best engineers, VC-s struggle to get next Zuckerberg-s into their pipelines. Universities, employers, and investors do not care about applicants’ countries of origin; it is only the caliber of talent that matters. How can we efficiently connect them with each other on a global scale, and build the borderless and fair world of the future?
In this post, I will focus on the second scenario: access to jobs.
Our Work Next.Gen
Over 50% of the US workforce is estimated to become remote in 10 years. The rest of the developed countries, as always, will follow the US with 5-to-10-year lag. The competition for top talent is already high, and the US companies are actively bringing people from abroad for in-office jobs: 71% of STEM workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born. Once the work culture finally shifts towards the remote model, borders between countries will not matter anymore. Sooner or later another financial crisis will strike the US, companies will need to cut expenses and it will further catalyze the growth of job market for remote international workers.
Google-s and Amazon-s of the world will build their own platforms to recruit and manage the global remote workforce, but what about small and medium companies? They will need help. This need represents a tremendous opportunity, and Microsoft is in the best position to seize it. Microsoft should acquire WeWork and merge it with LinkedIn. It will become a one-stop destination for companies looking to recruit and manage a remote workforce.
- Imagine: You are the CEO of a small Minnesota-based company. You need to hire a marketing manager. Your budget is limited, but your JD requirements are very specific, unique, and you want the best talent. You go to Microsoft for assistance. Microsoft helps you find and recruit this person in New Zeeland (LinkedIn), fully equips her with cloud productivity tools (Office and Dynamics 365), provides her with office space in Wellington (WeWork) and manages payment processing and legal compliance (TBD). Microsoft charges you some % on top of her salary every month, but you are happy to pay as the value you are getting is totally worth it.
- Now, imagine that over 50% of jobs are managed this way… Radical change, you think? But we live in the time of radical changes, so brace for the future.
Satya Nadella, please, pick up a phone and call Adam Neumann. You have a chance to attack inequality on a global scale. And to secure Microsoft’s place as the world’s most valuable company when the next financial crisis comes.
