Anywhere Club turns 1 year old

The anniversary of the Club launch is a good opportunity to reflect on what was done during the last year and what we still want to do. When we started one year ago, we were driven by the desire to help people: people taking their first career step, people growing and developing in the field of IT, people around the world in all different stages of their tech careers. The vision of the Club and the direction of its development have changed many times since then, but one thing has remained constant: we make the Club about and for people who want to evolve in tech.

Now is a time of significant changes for tech specialists due to multiple factors: the slowdown of the global economy and of the resulting impact on the IT industry; disruption of the labor market by AI and LLM; and the overall uncertainty that has pervaded society during last year or eighteen months. We can definitely say the following: tech will never be like before. And we are still in the process of finding out how it's going to be. We as a Club are focused on helping users navigate their way through the new reality.

Market trends

The slowdown of the global economy has significantly impacted the IT industry as a whole, and the demand for tech specialists in particular.

From 2010 to 2022, we saw steady and consistent growth of the IT sector, which was first defined by the active digitalization of the consumer sector (B2C). This growth was enhanced by the digitalization of the business sector (B2B). There was a significant boost after a brief market dip caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, we are witnessing a normal and cyclical process of market correction, with companies beginning to rethink their attitude toward the effectiveness of investments in IT tools. In a situation of high market uncertainty, most companies and individuals tend to shift toward savings, rather than investing in promising technologies.

I'm looking at the future of the IT market with optimism, though, because:

1. Companies in traditional economy sectors have considerable potential for adapting modern technology. This indicates unrealized demand that will manifest itself in the market when the stabilization phase of the economy begins.
2. New technologies are emerging and technologies previously available only to large technology corporations are becoming publicly available, including things such as Large Language Models. This will stimulate increased competition, market growth, the emergence of new professions, and — as a consequence — new jobs.
3. The spread and availability of modern technology enables developing countries to make leaps in technological quality and catch up with developed countries. This will create the prerequisites for economic growth and, consequently, growth in the number of high-tech jobs.

I'm sure that, in the near future, there will be more jobs in the IT sector. The knowledge and experience requirements for new positions, however, will be higher than they were before, when the market experienced staffing shortages. This means that now is the time to invest in education and get as much practical experience as possible. Special attention should be paid to soft skills, problem solving skills, critical thinking, the ability to work with uncertainty. Domain knowledge of AI and ML is also crucial, as is the ability to apply these technologies. As the saying goes, AI will not replace you, but the person using AI will. People will seek to automate tasks involving a high level of determinacy and a low level of interaction with others. It will be important to focus on less defined and more innovative tasks.

In Anywhere Club, we are trying to produce as much useful content as possible to help people develop in tech and stay ahead of the coming changes.

About the Club today

I mentioned above that our vision for the Club has changed several times this year, and I’ll elaborate a bit on that.

We used to be more of a showcase, with a set of opportunities for growth in IT from us and our partners. Now, we as a Club have already taken the first steps toward personalizing the user experience.

I believe that the experience of our educational partners, the technological breakthrough in the development of Large Language Models (like ChatGPT), and their broader availability, will allow us to offer a qualitatively new value opportunity to the members of Anywhere Club.

The development of LLM and AI will allow us to provide each member of Anywhere Club with exactly what they need in order to achieve their goals.

Our priorities moving forward include:

• Increasing the number of proposals for growth in IT from Anywhere Club and partners without a loss in quality.
• Organizing optimal delivery of proposals to the members of Anywhere Club.

Thank you

On this day, I want to say a big thank you to our users for their interest in the Club, their willingness to share feedback, and for creating content. Without its members, Anywhere Club wouldn't make any sense. Thank you for being with us!

I encourage all of you to keep registering and filling out your profile if you haven't done so already. This will help us to improve and to be even more useful to you. Tell your friends who are interested in tech about us: we'll be even stronger together.

And, of course, I'm very grateful to the Anywhere Club team for the work that they do and have done. We've accomplished a lot in a year, and I am sure we can do even more. The team is working hard, and I see and appreciate that.

Achievements

While thinking about Anywhere Club achievements during the past year, I came up with the following list:

1. Active users. During this year, tens of thousands of people began or continued their IT journey with us.
2. Updated user profiles. These should be the starting point for exploring the Club and personalizing the user experience after registration. We will roll out a number of features around the profile that will reveal a new side to the Club.
3. Content. We've done a lot of work on creating useful content for our audience and will continue to do so. We want to develop cooperations with the authors of content and provide a platform for its promotion.
4. Career Bootcamp. This is a complete product within a product that helps people who are looking for work.
5. Partners. We have reached agreements with a number of partners that will start providing their services to the members of Anywhere Club on special terms in the very near future.

Anywhere Club in numbers

• More than 1,300 users received LinkedIn licenses and began training with Anywhere Club;
• More than 5K users took the career test;
• More than 9K users determined their level of English with the help of the test;
• 3K users have joined our community in Discord;
• 120+ articles were published in the blog;
• 60 videos were released on the Club’s YouTube channels, and 30 Discord events were conducted;
• 11K+ people are subscribed to the social media of Anywhere Club;
• More than 100 people are currently studying through, and 42 people have successfully graduated from, the Anywhere Club Career Bootcamp.

It's also very nice to see reposts of our materials by experts and opinion leaders of the IT sphere in themed channels on social media.

Future plans

We look forward to working in three main directions in the near future:

• Personalizing user experiences and suggestions.
• Extending the number of offers from partners.
• Continuing to produce quality content with the help of the editorial staff, and adding content from community experts.

Wishes

Happy birthday to you, Anywhere Club!

From the bottom of my heart, I wish the Club even more users who love and appreciate what we built and are continuing to build together. I want new member success stories to be born every day.

Knowing that the Club has helped, and still helps, people reach their goals is the biggest motivation for me to move forward.

To conclude, I would like to ask our users: what would you like us to implement or change in the Club in the next year?