Anyone who says Google is going to "pull out" of Ireland doesn't know how tech FDI works. They won’t pull out, not because of loyalty to Ireland, but because it's bad for business. But to understand how exposed IE or UK or NL is, look closely at job type. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-07/google-abandons-plan-to-rent-dublin-office-for-2-000-workers

Big tech companies have two critical functions: Engineering & Sales. They build products & sell them, write code & own customer relationships. Eng is the higher caste but Sales is important too. Every other function is “glue” or “support”.

If you don’t write code or carry a sales quota, your job is not safe. A junior engineer is safer than a Director of Customer Service.

When covid layoffs happened globally at tech companies in Mar/Apr, some cities were harder hit than others. Why? Because engineers were the last to go. Job cuts in San Fran were lower than Denver or Dublin or London because SF HQ had relatively more engineers than other cities.

So if you’re a government that relies on Big Tech FDI, the first lesson is: know what jobs they prize most. Count the number of employees who write code or carry a sales quota. They’ll be the last to go. (Journos, get a Linkedin Sales Navigator subscription!)

That was all true even before covid. But is Ireland uniquely vulnerable to a post-covid working world? Let’s assume much business travel will return after a vaccine & increased remote working will endure, which has a specific knock-on impact on Eng & Sales

Tech companies will be more comfortable with engineers working remotely. This means less engineering concentration at HQ in San Francisco. (That was already a trend for several years pre-covid.) Why can’t this be good news for Dublin or London or Berlin?

Sales will happen more over Zoom. IE & NL used to compete only for Inside Sales (vs Enterprise Sales) because big deals were done in person in London or Paris or Hamburg. But in a post-covid world of mostly remote sales, small “field sales” offices may suffer more than hubs

A country that depends on tech FDI shouldn't get distracted by office space & what that implies for future job numbers. Lower value jobs will eventually disappear anyway—quietly, with no sudden “pull out”—if not due to covid, then due to automation. That should be old news.

Focus instead on how Engineering & Sales teams are changing in the face of covid. That’s where the opportunity for tech FDI lies.