“Always keep your running shoes around your neck”.
After staying at my second job too long and becoming an “expert beginner” in 2008 and being stuck, I said “never again”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39629190
1. I keep enough savings in a liquid account to pay my expenses between 9-12 months.
2. I keep my skills up to date.
3. Don’t be a “ticket taker”. This link I posted to HN describes my thoughts perfectly (It isn’t my blog)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818169
4. Keep your network strong.
My first layoff was in 2011 when the company was sold for scraps and they let everyone go. We all knew it was coming. Management was up front with us about the difficulties the companies was facing and that kept us apprised of the companies that our investors were looking to for acquisitions. Our investors also promised us that we would get paid for every hour we worked.
Most of us stuck around to the bitter end, when the time came, they gave us our notice, we all went to lunch together and came back to the office and just joked around for awhile.
The CTO had a couple of recruiter friends reach out to us. From looking at LinkedIn, everyone got a better job within a month. Our major customer arranged for me to finish my work as a contractor for them after making an agreement with the acquirer to let me keep the code while working for the customer.
The second time was the year before last and it was Amazon. I commented here about four months after it happened.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963988
I honestly didn’t think about the layoff three weeks after it happened. It was then my 8th job since 1996, I got my severance and moved on to my ninth job three weeks later.
The next job after that one ended up being mote shitty than I could imagine. I got laid off from there last year. I replied to an internal recruiter from my current company and again had a job three weeks later.