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IT HAS BEEN a busy couple of weeks for OpsTalent.
Set up in 2015 by Cork brothers Ken and Trevor Coyne, the Poland-based company builds software applications for its clients – including applications that assist with remote working, something that is quickly becoming a necessity for many businesses.
“Companies are asking for more support from us in the last two weeks,” he said. “There is more demand in the short term – a lot of companies are being more proactive and making sure everything is running correctly.”
Some of the company’s clients range from Revolut to HSBC, while its Irish customers include Flex-Fi and Irish-headquartered Kingspan.
Coyne said there is concern over future projects, with a lot of businesses halting their plans to see how the next few weeks pan out. “Projects that are currently running are ongoing but I am finding a lot of new projects going forward have been put on hold,” he said.
“It is a wait and see approach to see what companies are impacted (by the virus) so longterm that is a concern,” he said.
He is expecting business to be disrupted for two months and for things to return thereafter.
The company has a small office in Krakow, with a larger one in Wroclaw and employs over 160 people across its operations. The firm also has a multilingual customer support team that’s available 24/7 – and it builds teams and manages on clients’ behalf ‘so companies don’t have to set up an office in Poland’.
At the moment he said Poland has gone into lockdown, with everyone working from home – everything closed except for grocery shops.
“Everybody is quite nervous in terms of social distancing. So it is very quiet at the moment,” he explained.
Coyne and his brother are no strangers to uncertainty – having decided to leave Ireland during the recession. “We were in the pub business in Cork for years. We had pubs down there – we had a student bar there. I used to run the pub with my three other brothers. I was in college at the time,” he said.
“Then we got involved in property back in 2006 and it all went downhill very rapidly,” he said.
When the recession hit he moved to London with his brother – who met a Polish girl and ended up moving with her. “I ended up in Belgium but now we are back working together in Poland and my other brothers did separate things,” he said.
Coyne has found that it has been an exciting time to work on tech in Poland.
“There’s a lot of cutting edge technology and innovation here. I spoke to a guy who has set up a gaming company and built space satellites for it,” he explained. Coyne also runs a podcast called Poland Technology where he interviews various Polish tech founders.
“20 years ago businesses would have started here as a cost solution and access to talent at a good price which is very much operational focused. Now we are moving to quality talent and high tech innovation,” he said.
One of the positives he sees coming from the coronavirus is that businesses will be more open to remote working.
“I believe companies will see that they can actually do it, that it works and they will start to look at other options like distributed teams or look to other countries for talent,” he said.
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Written by Laura Roddy and posted on Fora.ie
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Cant wait for Decembers Budget. More cuts and tax hikes to be made. Then you will see people moaning. I hope the people who voted yes are proud of themselves. Unpatriotic fools.
Well said!
Whereas if the treaty was rejected, a load of money would magically appear, as if from nowhere… Really?
@Irish patriot, I am very proud of the fact that I voted yes. You could be right, it may have been foolish, but at least I use my real name when posting, and don’t use some self-righteous pseudonym.
So you think the next budget wouldn’t have been harsh if t he No vote had won? Newsflash: we are in the crapper, financially, and harsh budgets are going to be a sad feature of Irish life for another few years. The treaty was about imposing rules on our feckless politicians to stop them running up any more stupid deficits. Whether Yes or No, the result of this referendum was never going to magic our debt away.
Donacha you are the worst kind of fool too stupid to understand How goosed you are
@Irish Patriot
Why don’t you aim your anger at the lazy arseholes that didn’t bother to vote? Why are you aiming your anger at the “yes” people? They voted, they voted to the best of their ability and conscious just like you! Don’t be so arrogant and assume that the “no” side is right. To be honest nobody knows and didn’t know really, honestly, how to vote. But at the same time, we our democratic right gave us the chance to vote …. and we did, the lazy arsehole didn’t! Blame them.
Don’t call me an unpatriotic fool, or the other 60% who voted Yes. Morons like you are typical of the no vote fanatics who had nothing better to do than to ‘spread their message’ on the journal comments section. Party is over now – get back in your box instead of wishing a harsh budget on your countrymen and women because the majority voted yes
Buckwheat
Irish Patriot is telling the truth there will be a harsh budget for everyone in this country in December.
how do you get a job at these count centers? where do i apply for the next one? i hear the money is good!
What ever the out come is an embarrassment for for the Government they may have got their yes vote but the poor turn out speaks volumes . The people have spoken in more ways the one…
First time I’ve seen Joe Higgins smile in years!
minister for employment..watching f*****g employment! Should be minister of overseeing our young emigrate.
Caption on the first picture there is wrong. Lucinda Creighton is on the left (visually speaking) and the other person in the picture is Kevin Humphries, Labour TD for Dublin South East.
I’m one of the lazy arseholes that didn’t vote…..I don’t live in Ireland at the moment
6 billion of cuts in the budget while we handed 2.5 billion to bond holders last werk. Brilliant.
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