from Hacker News

Where are you in your company's layoff list?

by pietrofmaggi on 3/26/16, 8:08 PM with 59 comments

• by js2 on 3/26/16, 10:17 PM

  I've been a sys admin and/or coder professionally since 1996. I've been a manager and an individual contributor. I've worked for big companies (HP, Yahoo), and small (in the first dozen employees). I've been through a company growing from 100 employees to nearly 1000 and back down to 100 again. I've been through two acquisitions, and probably a dozen layoffs.

  I've never been let go. No doubt I've been lucky. But there's a saying: luck favors the prepared. I consistently get shit done, and have a reputation for doing so.

  Do your job. Do your job well. Make sure you're not invisible. The rest is out of your control, but it's worked for me.

  Knock on wood.

• by justin_vanw on 3/26/16, 10:33 PM

  Keep your resume always up to date? That is the kind of risk free but pointless advice you see here and there, but what is the point?

  Are you going to forget the highlights of the work you have done? Not really.

  Does it take a lot of work to update a resume, such that upon being laid off you have to delay your job search for a significant amount of time because you have to go into full time 'resume updating' mode for a month? Not at all.

  Updating a resume takes like 4 hours. If you've been at the same job for 20 years, it might take 8 hours. There is just no reason to 'always keep your resume up to date'. Not a real reason not to do it, but no reason to do it either.

  It's like advising people to always wash the bottoms of their running shoes with an old toothbrush after every run. Will it hurt? Not really. Will it help? Nope. Should you do it? If you feel like it or enjoy it, shit, go for it, but it's also a waste of time.

• by mooreds on 3/26/16, 9:44 PM

  I have a friend who works for a big aerospace conpany, and he keeps an eye on his team members. One in particular is "the buffer". This person is apparently not that good at tasks.

  If "the buffer" ever gets laid off, my friend has to be concerned. Until then, "the buffer" is a source of comfort to my friend.

• by thedevil on 3/26/16, 9:31 PM

  I loved this article, but I do have to disagree on one point: your productivity matters.

  Lots of teams have someone who is not pulling their weight but the boss doesn't want to have to fire them.

• by urda on 3/26/16, 10:03 PM

  While the article is a nice run down, honestly there's not a whole lot you can do when "your number is up".

  You may be told that you are low on the list or think you have a "buffer", but honestly if push comes to shove you will be laid off. It doesn't matter where you may be positioned.

• by bjourne on 3/26/16, 11:30 PM

  While we're doling out life pro tips, mine wold be to "never make it so your value of self is dependent on your job." E.g. you can believe that you never having been laid off is a testament to your great skill and awesomeness, but that will only make the fall much harder when you are laid off. I mean that in a positive way.

• by phn on 3/26/16, 11:17 PM

  This way of thinking feels a bit toxic. I don't do my job with the objective of not being laid off.

  A business relationship such as employment works as long as it works for both parties. Pretty much like other relationships, when it stops working for one party, it's time to move on.

• by sudeepj on 3/27/16, 5:16 AM

  I can relate to this article. While in UK, back in 2008/9, I was a senior developer (C/C++). The favourite topic during lunch times was who will be gone or who will be retained. One guy, who everyone thought would be safe was a Team Lead (of a system written in COBOL). This guy had been awarded topmost grade in recent appraisal cycle.

  He was layed-off and I got the charge of handling his system, in addition to mine, with no promotion. Apparently the only thing mattered was how much "value-for-money" an employee is bringing to the table. I came to know later that almost all team leads were layed-off because the systems in question were in existence for last 10 yrs and were stable.

• by Havoc on 3/26/16, 10:28 PM

  Pretty far down - got key knowledge and experience on a key project. Definitely replaceable but would be painful for the company so I'm betting they'd rather not. My employer doesn't really do layoffs anyway or rather something pretty cataclysmic would have to happen to trigger it.

  Its also not a big deal for me - employers are replaceable too. ;)

• by an4rchy on 3/27/16, 3:13 AM

  M&A is also another interesting case for layoffs, in this case it might not follow this traditional format as it could be redundancies that are eliminated because of political reasons and not necessarily performance/salary.

  It feels like the reasons for layoffs boil down to:

  - Money (Run rate/market/shareholders)

  - Strategy (Company decides to go in a new/different direction)

  - Politics (Internal to the company/executives/board)

• by ja27 on 3/27/16, 2:24 AM

  I'd like to think I'm safe, since I'm sleeping with the CEO - my wife, but since I'm the only other employee I guess I'm the first to go.

  But my last job...

  All of my product code, even stuff I'd inherited, had been stabilized, documented, and had decent test coverage. Strike one.

  I was given a manager title but had no direct reports. Strike two.

  I was moved to an architect role on a struggling cross-product effort. Strike three.

• by phamilton on 3/27/16, 2:43 AM

  As a Yahoo employee, I can say with certainty that I'm not in the bottom 15%.