Tech and economics.
In an article published in Harvard Business Review (HBR) dated February 12, 2019, titled "Why Tech Companies Hire So Many Economists", Susan Athley and Michael Luca pointed out the importance of economics and the role of economists in the tech business. In the article, they highlighted that large US tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have a large team of Ph.D. economists.
So why are economists so valuable in these tech organizations? The growth of tech economists in the past years has helped the tech industry answer some of the most important issues in the market. Questions related to pricing, like, how will the market respond if we make the app free or what if we charge a little amount will they still download the app? Or what market should we focus on, will tech products sell on this market or that market? With the data of tech companies and the toolkits of economists, questions like these would be readily answered.
If you are an economics student, you would probably remember the times when you took your thesis and running a series of statistical tests to test relationships of variables. This experience in testing and studying relationships (accepting or rejecting the hypothesis whether there is a significant relationship or not) is a valuable expertise in the tech sector. When an economist is asked about a problem, he does not jump into conclusions and giving answers without basis, instead, he uses data and economics statistical tests to figure out possible answers to the problem. In simple words, economists know how to use numbers in answering complex real-world problems.
HBR article link: Why Tech Companies Hire So Many Economists
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