A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

After being laid off more than once, I think I'd adjust the advice a little:

- You're only obliged to work your contract hours. If you do more then make sure that you, personally, are getting something out of it, whether that's "I look good to my boss" or "I take job satisfaction from this" or just "I get to play with Kotlin". Consider just not working overtime.

- Take initiative, but do so sustainably. Instead of trying to look good for promo, or alternately doing the bare minimum and just scraping by, take on impactful work at a pace that won't burn you out and then leave if it isn't rewarded.

- Keep an ear to the ground. Now you've got a job, you don't need another one, but this is a business relationship just like renting a house or paying for utilities. Be aware of the job market, and consider interviewing for roles that seriously interest you. Don't go crazy and waste the time of every company in your city lest it come back to bite you, but do interview for roles you might actually take.

The last two points are fine, however.

Indeed. The real discovery in the article is that the people who manage performance and the people who manage headcount were completely different people. The article writer had (common mistake) assumed that impressing the former would take care of the latter. It doesn't; the techniques to manage the headcount people are different.

I wholeheartedly endorse your adjustments - it is fine to go above and beyond but for heavens sake people please think about why beyond some vague competitive urge. Going above and beyond without a plan just means the effort will likely be wasted. Some cynicism should be used. Negotiate explicitly without assuming that the systems at play are fair, reasonable or looking out for you.

> the techniques to manage the headcount people are different

I would like to hear a little bit more about those techniques.

The only one I am aware of is to make sure that you have promotions under your belt: The arm's-length people who plan layoffs know very little about the individual's other than their job title and rank. But this advice is hardly useful: it is extremely rare for an individual to have a choice of whether to be promoted or something different.

What other techniques are you aware of?

I think it comes down to a previous discussion on HN, "don't just crush tickets".

Crushing tickets gives you localized visibility and job security but doesn't help when your managers managers manager has to make cuts.

But if you get name dropped for launching a big feature at the monthly all-hands, are getting added to higher level calls, or even chat up your managers manager at the off-site, that's the difference between being an Excel row and being a person.

It might be. But I’ve been in the room when a very high performing team was given the ax. This was a team that had all kinds of kudos and objective measures showing they were better than their peers.

But their office lease was up sooner and getting rid of that magnified the savings.

I’ve done many layoffs and been laid off many times, and the advice I’d tell people is don’t think it’s a reflection on you if you get laid off _or dont_.

Most of the time it’s just macro factors out of your control.

Even if that’s the case, when it’s time to interview for your next job, would you rather be able to say “I led this major feature” or “I pulled a lot of tickets off the board and my team did $x”

You can couch the tickets as major work as well. Learning how to describe your work to people well is advantageous, it’s just not a panacea to avoid layoff (or get hired).

You're not wrong but a decent amount of my manager's time interviewing potential employees is trying to suss out what is the work they personally did and what are just the thing their team accomplished while they were there. If you can't describe off the top of your head, in pretty great detail, the implementation work required for these big initiatives, lots of interviewers will assume you're trying to pass your team's work off as yours.

It doesn't help that most folks' resumes, especially for that mid-hoping-for-senior cohort, is about 50-60% stuff other people did that they're somewhat aware of.

> trying to suss out what is the work they personally did and what are just the thing their team accomplished while they were there.

This is the single biggest reason i detest 1/2 page resumes and always ask for detailed CV. The "summary"+"qualifications" paragraphs in the beginning of the CV is the resume after which one can decide to read or not the rest of the details. For example, my CV is 8 pages long (i am old and have hopped between companies :-) since i give an overview and then the details of my specific responsibilities for each job.

IMHO, everybody should present their CV like this and leave overviews to LinkedIn profiles.

Honestly I don't want to read narrative prose which is as likely to be a lie as anything else on the resume/CV. A half page might be fine if you've got a dozen CVs to look at for an ultra-specific role. If you just need a half-decent Golang developer and have 80 resumes that pass the initial screen? I'm not reading 40 pages of fluff, and if I'm not going to read all of its it's unfair to read any of it.

If you are tailoring your resume to the job, it is incredibly easy to fit everything you need into 2 full pages. If your job descriptions have a bunch of unrelated stuff it tells me you're spamming this exact resume out to anyone who will read it which is already a big negative signal (though not fatal). I'm hiring individual contributors, not Executive VPs, so the qualifications we're actually looking for can easily fit on .75-1 page. If you're going for COO of a publicly traded company maybe the CV route makes sense, but truthfully if that's what you're going for the CV itself is pretty unimportant, and you're still probably just paying someone else to craft it for you.

I just don't see the benefit in someone with 10-15 YOE in mostly expired tech writing pages and pages about stuff they did a long time ago.

I already pointed out in my other comments that the first couple of pages is the resume but the details are given to consult as needed. This is how it should be since more details help one make better decisions. The current Recruiting/HR practices are broken which nobody seems to question. Human Resource is very important in this highly competitive economy where a single employee can change the entire future of the company, and yet people are using keyword searches, bullet point explanations and snap judgements for recruiting. Add in the fact that there is almost no training given to new employees nowadays which means it is even more important to recruit the right person.

You need all the signals you can get to properly evaluate somebody. This means all experience/technologies etc. are relevant at some level for decision making. For example, lets say somebody did backend Java five years ago but are doing frontend React now and want to change back. Unless i see it in their CV and ask about it i will not get to know that their heart is set on backend work even though they are interviewing for the frontend job. I can then decide to steer them to what they want thus benefiting the company greatly. A person who gets what they want is a happy, productive and loyal employee.

A similar idea in a different domain is Jeff Bezos' banning all powerpoint presentations (a 2-page resume is a powerpoint presentation in my book) for important meetings but insisting on a 6-page memo (with any needed annexes) containing all the details. Hear in his own words - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYb5pBVBXEg