There’s a passage in Alice in Wonderland I’ve always come back to. It’s the one I think of most often when it comes to decision-making under uncertainty.
When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which path to take, he answers: “That depends on where you want to get to.”
I return to this story often, both in life and at work.
Right now, most of us are a bit like Alice. Not in Wonderland, but navigating challenges, change, and more possible paths than usual.
Deciding in a changing market
In today’s tech recruitment landscape, that question has stopped being symbolic and become practical. Companies, teams, and professionals are operating in a market changing so fast that deciding in context matters as much as the ability to adapt.
The question behind every decision
Coming out of a recent debate I took part in, “Tech Recruitment in 2026: Profiles, Processes, and Partnerships in a Market in Transformation,” alongside Inês Calhabéu (Siemens Mobility), Susana Coelho (MC Sonae), and Ana Cristina Estevão (NOS), one thing was clear: there’s no manual for the right path. There are multiple scenarios playing out at once.
But one thing stays constant: every decision gets made in a context of change.
1. Different companies, different stages of change
The first decision is understanding what stage each organisation is actually in. Companies aren’t all at the same point in the cycle.
Some keep growing and hiring consistently. Others are stabilising. Others are restructuring or redefining their teams.
There’s no single answer, the reality is different for every company. The focus shifts away from hiring volume and toward correctly reading the stage each company is in.
2. Critical profiles keep evolving
The second decision is understanding what still counts as critical.
Data, infrastructure, and cybersecurity remain central to the tech market. But the conversation has moved on from which profiles are needed to how those profiles are being redefined inside organisations, with more or less AI in the mix.
3. The skills gaining weight
The third decision is about the skills that now set talent apart. Resilience, curiosity, adaptability, and critical thinking are becoming essential.
So is the ability to read the business, the organisational context, and increasingly complex technical structures.
The question stops being purely technical and becomes contextual: how do you decide within the reality of each organisation.
4. AI: continuous acceleration
The fourth decision is figuring out how to integrate AI into work and teams. AI is already part of daily operations. It speeds up processes, automates tasks, and is rapidly reshaping roles like Product Managers, Machine Learning Engineers, and Data Scientists & Data Engineers.
But the real question isn’t just what gets replaced. It’s how this forces teams and organisations to redefine where the real human value in the work actually sits.
We Are META, the thesis applied to the market
When we say the tech market needs to be more people-centred, we say it backed by practice, not just opinion. People-centred team extension isn’t a slogan for us, it’s the model.
In five years, We Are META has built a position in the Portuguese Team Extension and tech recruitment market that the community itself now recognises:
- 9th place overall in the Teamlyzer ranking
- 3rd best consultancy
- 6th best SME
These numbers aren’t a trophy. They’re a signal. They show that when talent is treated as the protagonist, not as inventory, the community notices. And that the companies who choose to work with us find a partner with its house in order, not a middleman shuffling CVs.
The mission hasn’t changed since day one: humanise the tech market in Portugal. Build closer, more transparent, more sustainable relationships between the talent doing the work and the companies that need it.
That mission is what shapes the strategic view we hold.
Where the path leads
And this is where Alice comes back into the conversation. If the destination is clear, a tech market centred on people and built to serve people, then strategy stops being an abstraction. It becomes a concrete choice about how each organisation integrates technology, decides on profiles, designs teams, and invests in the people already inside them.
AI accelerates. Context shifts. Tools evolve. But the competitive advantage stays exactly where it’s always been: in people. And the companies that win are the ones putting better-prepared people, with better tools, inside organisations that treat them as protagonists, not resources. That’s the strategic view we hold. It’s not the most comfortable path, it’s the one that will still make sense five years from now.
People who are better equipped by technology keep pushing companies forward. The organisations that understand this early gain a real advantage. The ones still treating talent as inventory get left behind.
If Alice asked today which path to take, the answer wouldn’t be “any of them will do.” It would be: know where you want to go, choose who walks with you, and the path gets built with clarity, not by inertia.
The destination is people. The path is humanisation. And on that path, the organisations that best prepare, equip, and respect their people are the ones pushing the whole market forward.
In a world of unicorns, we have Rhinos 🦏
