A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

* If you can do the job but nobody else can and it’s a critical role you are probably immune from layoffs even with a horrible annual evaluation. It’s not you that’s critical, it’s the job you fill that’s critical.

* if you take deliberate actions to make yourself critical, such as the only person who knows the code base, it’s only a matter of time before the mega corp dumps you. Self-appointed critical people are too expensive and viewed as toxic by management, but you can probably get away with this at a mom and pops shop.

* once incompetence becomes the universally accepted norm it doesn’t matter that you can do what others cannot. Everybody is a replaceable beginner irrespective of their titles and years of experience and treated exactly as such. The survivors are the people that don’t rock the boat.

* if you have years of experience operating, managing, and authoring both people and technology in side projects you are probably far further along into your career than you are getting paid for. If your career is stagnant trying doing something wildly different and see what happens. I achieved rapid promotion after changing careers.

* don’t ever work more than you have to unless it’s something you want to do knowing you won’t get paid for it. I liked writing personal software outside of work because at work it could do my job for me or it frees me from the restrictions of shitty commercial software.

* the best way to impress management is to 1. do less work and 2. solve tough problems and share your solutions. Don’t be special. Demonstrate value.

I think at a big enough company the people making layoff decisions don't know or care what job is critical. In some cases that means your job wasn't as critical as you thought. But I've also seen layoffs that seem just downright stupid. Literally saw someone laid off then re-hired to a different team a couple weeks later with a substantial bump to their pay.

At a certain level of abstraction nothing will save you. Critical job? Bean counters don't know the specifics of each team or project. High level? Cost too much, not contributing enough to short term goals.

I was once told that a lot of executive level management was based off gut instinct more than cold logical decision making. It would not surprise me if this also applied to deciding who is laid off.