from Hacker News

Ask HN: How did you sense you were on the chopping block?

by a_lifters_life on 2/7/24, 1:52 PM with 21 comments

• by meetingthrower on 2/7/24, 6:48 PM

  So I've been a consultant and helped companies do huge layoffs, starting from the top down. The lesson is you are NEVER safe unless you are the owner of the company. I've put many a 20 year veteran who was an SVP of etc etc on the chopping block.

  Also another huge risk is if you are a manager of 1 or 2 people. You are not a manager you are a layer. If you are a manager of many "managers" of 1 or 2 people this is doubley true.

  While tech experts are often different, if you are an individual contributor with an absurd comp given your actual technical skills, beware.

  AMA!

• by PepGuardiola on 2/7/24, 8:30 PM

  Here is a bit of advice from 20 years in IT:

  Always apply for jobs, even if you are sure you will not be fired. It's like going to the gym every week and keeping your six pack. Don't wait to be fired, be always looking. Do the interviews, get to the final interview and then decide whether to proceed or not.

• by mooreds on 2/7/24, 2:09 PM

  I had less and less to do. The company had pivoted, still had no revenue, and my job function was less necessary.

  I was hunting for work within in the org, but was remote so was operating at a disadvantage. I would ask the product manager for work, then do it (typically an integration and documentation) then ask for more.

  It got to the point where my manager asked me to stop bugging the product manager.

  I felt a vague disquiet, but having never been laid off before, didn't quite recognize what was coming.

• by the_only_law on 2/8/24, 3:33 AM

  Tbh I wasn’t paying attention, but in retrospect the signs were obvious:

  1. We were owned by a PE company. I should have been more alert if no other reason, but this.

  2. Company was banking on a strategy that wasn’t working. Not to go too much into what was happening, but the company had some established legacy products that most of the customers were still using. However majority of the hiring and work being done was all-in on there new suite of software under which the whole company revolved. However they were seeing very little adoption . I worked very close to customers and what I saw was that customers just did not want the new software. I didn’t do what they wanted and was filled to the brim with buzzword-tier features and concepts that no one really cared about.

  3. There were a few signs my manager mentioned to me after the layoffs, but I hadn’t been paying too much attention to. There were some sudden reorg choices that didn’t affect me too much, but more than that, there was a seemingly desperate rebrand announced some time before. It didn’t make sense to me at the time, but in the context of 2) it seems more clear. There were also a number of curious lower level executive departures in the months prior.

  It was a small SaaS company and they ended up dumping around half of us in late 2022. Not sure what they’re up to now. They’ve done yet another rebrand since and little information remains regarding the old company name and endeavors.

• by datadrivenangel on 2/7/24, 5:20 PM

  I was told that org changes were coming, but that they would probably be good changes. Two separate senior people said I'd be fine, and then were totally surprised when I got laid off.

  Senior leadership had lost the ability to plan and execute effectively, so I knew something was going to happen.

• by donatj on 2/7/24, 2:18 PM

  Different kind of chop, but my team was getting sold. I had zero idea.

  For a year in advance we kept having to break services and databases into two parts or clone services for corporate and for us. It was done under the guise of “we need to be agile” but it made zero sense without the hidden context.

• by sloaken on 2/7/24, 3:58 PM

  Sadly I never saw it coming, but should have.

  First place, was bought buy a major corporation. They clearly told us they bought us just for our client base. The place had 2000 people at that building when I started. 10 years, and annual layoffs later, I thought I was essential. They had a layoff, woot I am safe this year. Then they laid me off as well as about 100 others, they decided they did not cut enough on prior layoff. This brought the location down to 100, a year later it closed.

  Second layoff, was a company I had only been at a year. Biggest sign I had was the new director and my boss did not get along. She and everyone under her was laid off.

  Oh well I am better now :-)

• by matt_s on 2/7/24, 4:35 PM

  Company was going thru a split (selling a large division off), the project I was on was going to get axed for sure, its just that it would take 6-12 months for the company to realize that and actually do the downsizing. When I put in my notice my manager was happy because he thought he would have to lay me off in 6-9 months.

  If you're at a publicly traded company, pay attention to large shareholder changes and/or things that need to go through SEC and lawyers. It should be obvious what some potential outcomes are and the length of time for the SEC and lawyers to do their work is enough to start looking immediately and land another job.

• by xilinx_guy on 2/7/24, 4:32 PM

  I was at a startup where they showed the hardware sales funnel with NO customers anywhere except some "possibles" at the very top of the funnel. After a couple of months of this, there was a pivot away from hardware to focus on software, which actually had a few customers.

  Another startup, signs of trouble. Didn't take my picture for the corporate web page, and also asked to meet with a lawyer for documenting possible patent claims.

• by deterministic on 2/10/24, 12:26 AM

  Make sure you are working on projects that are generating real substancial $ for the company. And make sure your manager and his/her manager knows about this.

  It reminds me of some gangster movie where they are discussing whacking somebody. “But he is a good earner!” saved his life.

• by OnionBlender on 2/7/24, 6:34 PM

  The night before I had a meeting invite for 9am with HR and someone 3 levels above me in my org tree.

  In the months leading up to this I wasn't working on anything important. The larger project felt doomed to fail or get canceled (it was canceled) . My boss also told me I'm not autonomous enough and that I need to find my own projects.

• by a_lifters_life on 2/7/24, 1:53 PM

  I wanted to comment, I feel like Im in a situation where I feel i could be layed off ... mgmt asking me to document a whole process Ive worked on for over 3 years here.

  How did you know?