Let’s say you are an employee at a company that does mass layoffs. They do not lay you off like everyone else and keep you on. What is the best course of action to take at that point?
1. Review your finances. How long can you skip work without feeling financially stressed? This should include full expenses (medical insurance, family, etc.) and will determine the level of risk you can comfortably take with your job.
If you have 5+ years of cushion you can take a lot of risk. Even if the job market and your company both collapse you can downshift for a year or two and work on a new tech as a personal project. Droughts seldom last more than a couple of years. If you have less than 3 months of cushion, look for the lowest risk options (a strongest company you can work for) and try to build it up.
2. Decide whether you expect your current company to do well with the reduced headcount. If your company is publicly traded, read financial statements and analyst opinions try joining an investor call. Look at the outside information, not the HR infomercials.
If the company is expected to do well you can stay. Layoffs in strong companies often mean shakeouts beyond actual layoffs (teams merging and forming, etc.) and you might even be able to move to a better spot. If the company is in trouble, start looking for other options ASAP.
3. Learn what is the job market for your skills and if any adjacent areas have significantly better prospects (if so, buff up your skills). This can change quickly. Talk to your tech friends, especially those in hiring manager spots, to figure out if they are hiring/frozen/RIFfing.
In my own experience I think this is a dangerous attitude: anny other HNers out there that thought this and failed, maybe add a comment about your own experience?
I thought I had cushion. However that attitude led to me reseting my equity to zero when I was about 30, and it took more than a decade of my life before I felt like I was starting to recover.
Perhaps sometimes we had some luck, so we get some savings, and we then think “that was easy, I could do that again” and try something risky. But the environment or our circumstances have changed, and we can’t always replicate our past.
The other aspect is that I think we underestimate risk: for example when I was younger I would think creating a business worth a million dollars would be unbelievably great. Now I see that opportunity costs of a $X00,000 loss of income require a 10x return ($X million) to break even (to only just cover your risks). Also you need wayyyy more return than 10x to cover the fact that your time investment is not diversified: a 10x return on a game you can only play a few times is a massive gamble that you end up with nothing. You don’t want to end up with nothing after say 40, because the world starts to randomly switch into extremely-hard-mode sometime after ~40 (and everybody is unaware they were playing on easy-mode until after the switch changes).
I have seen people go from a good sized bank account to zero quickly by buying something expensive (a house, a boat, etc.) or by trying to start a business. One can always lose money on risky investments or outright gambling.
But I have never seen someone deplete a 5-year savings by downshifting for a period of time. I was talking about the second case: I do not have to worry about losing a job if I have 5+ years of living expenses. If I lose my job and have to cool heels for a year, so be it; there are still have 4+ years of cushion. My 2c.
My opinion is tempered by watching so many others flame out when trying to start businesses. Early flame out is often way better financially than many years of not quite succeeding (a friend just sold a business for peanuts after nearly a decade: costs and benefits but didn’t get the success they wanted).
Part of my comment is related to something I just read: a summary of Warren Buffett’s investing as:
RULE #1: don’t lose money.
RULE #2: don’t forget rule #1.
I”m not suggesting we shouldn’t chase rainbows - dreams are awesome even though they are usually social constructs driven by status. I guess my comment could be summarised as: don’t advise people to take risks. Either they are risk averse, in which case if they flame out due to your advice, that is bad. Or they are risk takers, in which case they need the opposite advice - try to be more sensible and less gambling.
The median return from people investing time into a business is probably nearer to zero than I would like to think. The average return is insanely skewed by the 1 in 1000 outliers. https://80000hours.org/2014/05/how-much-do-y-combinator-foun...
I mean, the world needs founders, but I strongly believe it is not a financially sensible risk for the vast majority of people that become founders. I am assuming your comment was aimed at potential founders.
Edit: I just noticed this relevant note in https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig... about Sam Bankman-Fried:
Here, SBF realized, was the rub: When he applied this principle to his own life, he came up short. There was little chance he’d get himself fired from Jane Street. Thus the decision to stick with Jane was a risk-averse preference. It was the logical equivalent of being offered a choice between $50 and 50 percent of $100, and saying, “Give me President Grant.” SBF was risk-neutral on behalf of Jane Street, but not, he realized, for his own life. To be fully rational about maximizing his income on behalf of the poor, he should apply his trading principles across the board. He had to find a risk-neutral career path—which, if we strip away the trader-jargon, actually means he felt he needed to take on a lot more risk in the hopes of becoming part of the global elite. The math couldn’t be clearer. Very high risk multiplied by dynastic wealth trumps low risk multiplied by mere rich-guy wealth. To do the most good for the world, SBF needed to find a path on which he’d be a coin toss away from going totally bust.I've never known a company that is in the process of layoffs not jumping at the chance to VRIF an employee because it is a far cleaner termination and honestly less stressful and upsetting for all involved IMHO.
The bigger factor is are you in a position that requires the company longer to replace you? If so you may just be in that shit position of being kept on another 6 months until the next round of layoffs and get a package half as good.
As the first poster said always get out first if you can as the packages never get better the worse a company does.
Never fool yourself into thinking you're too amazing to be let go and that is why you 'survived' this round of layoffs. The worst case is as I said, you are too good to be let go of yet.
(edit: The idea being that you might get fired "normally" as a result, and not get generous severance.)
HR is there to protect the company. Sometimes that aligns with protecting the employee but when shit hits the fan ask yourself does HR work for you or for the company?
I know I sound a bit 'down' saying that but it is an unfortunate reality that companies are not very loyal to their employees when times get tough.
Find a trusted friend in the company who is a survivor and ask them. Survivors have strong information networks for office politics and know such info.
Even in an economic downturn an engineer with Meta on their résumé is going to be well positioned to find employment inside of the three months or more pay and six month insurance runway this deal provides.
Having said that, if you're going to be worried about possibly/probably losing your job 6 months down the road what does it really matter if you have signalled you're not very invested in staying? The company has signalled they're not very invested either is how I look at it.
>(edit: The idea being that you might get fired "normally" as a result, and not get generous severance.)
Of course I am saying this as someone in Europe where firing someone "normally" is a lot more complicated and time consuming and comes with a whole list of other issues a company needs to make sure they manage properly. They can't just turn round and fire you with no pay because you "showed you were not very invested in the company as you asked if you could be let go when we were letting go of several thousand people". That is a 100% guaranteed legal hell hole no company likes to be in by choice.
In America perhaps that is something you genuinely need to worry about I don't know.
You may find there's nowhere better to go, but switching to "looking externally" rather than "looking internally" for new jobs is definitely a good idea.
Yeah that's kinda the rub right now though. Everyone's frozen, tons are laying off. If the only information you have is "my company did a layoff", it's not clear you're better off looking externally vs. internally vs. staying on your current team.
One bad case is you leave your company that just did a layoff for one that has yet to do one (but will need to soon).
Do what you feel comfortable with at the end of the day. My original reply was meant as one possible answer that I have seen first hand to work well for both parties.
I will add as another personal opinion though that I very rarely see people that choose to stay at a company going though layoffs hanging around very long.
More often than not those people experience a 'depression' (for want of a better word that escapes me as I write this) seeing their friends leave, not having the freedom the had back in the "good old days", little if any progression, the constant "sorry not this quarter, we're still recovering from the layoffs", living in constant anxiety that they will be in the next round of layoffs, etc. So they often leave within a year or two anyway.
Over the years I have played this game and now I am a bit more proactive about exiting before that 'depression' hits me. Of course what is right for me is not right for all, only you can truly decide what you feel is best given your situation.
In other words that same company that in its heyday relied on the person pulling an all-nighter 'for the good of the company' yet failed to ever offer a reciprocal 'sure, take all the paid time off you need buddy' in return gets what it earned.
Although you may hear the 'rats from a sinking ship' and 'you're deserting the company and leaving your colleagues to pick up the slack' shrieked from on down high by management - Fuck 'em. They didn't actually give a shit about you on the way up and they don't give a shit about you on the way down.
Jump fast, jump early, beat the pack
It's possible some of these are unfounded/exaggerated fears, though?
If you're 100% set on leaving with or without severance, for sure ask. But if you think you might prefer to stay if severance isn't an option, asking feels risky.
I'm not suggesting issuing ultimatums, of course, I'm just suggesting that you mentally prepare for needing to quit first, otherwise it takes a real pro to have that conversation. I know I'm not good enough to do it unless I talk about things like that with my manager regularly already.
I do wonder if these are questions you can ask confidentially in a different way. Like I dunno how big your place is but you might find this information easily in a meeting with HR, but HR is there to help the company (not you) so it depends on their priorities a lot. It's a very reasonable thing to wonder about when tens of thousands of people just got laid off from similar positions... I'd think a reasonable manager or HR person would understand that. But I certainly can't argue that managers and HR people are all reasonable!
And more hours may not be a direct request- anyone at the periphery of the dev process- in the past this was QA, now gets cut because devs can do it, SWE roles might have to start doing more ops work, etc...
When I last left the financial industry, it was so bad, that VPs- and that was back when it least had some meaning- at least it did when I first got the title around 2010, started having to do mundane weekend work like checking out the system after network/firewall changes, etc.
It can be death by a thousand cuts. Now the financial crisis was way worse because essentially everyone was hurting, and losing money- and interestingly I "got out" of that bad situation by going to tech. But that's just how these bad situations play out and deteriorate.
That said, companies are still profitable. There was a LOT of overhiring in the past few years. I don't expect things to get so bad, at all.
The advice to "take the first layoff" is weird, you rarely have a choice, if ever.
Oh how I wish I had volunteered cuz a year later basically everyone including me had quit anyway.
The next round was a security guy waiting in your office with a box and a packet of information about how to apply for unemployment.
Either way I hope those laid off land on their feet.
It seems that you should take as much advantage as possible of your legal status.