[js2]

I've been a sys admin and/or coder professionally since 1996. I've been a manager and an individual contributor. I've worked for big companies (HP, Yahoo), and small (in the first dozen employees). I've been through a company growing from 100 employees to nearly 1000 and back down to 100 again. I've been through two acquisitions, and probably a dozen layoffs.

I've never been let go. No doubt I've been lucky. But there's a saying: luck favors the prepared. I consistently get shit done, and have a reputation for doing so.

Do your job. Do your job well. Make sure you're not invisible. The rest is out of your control, but it's worked for me.

Knock on wood.

[sjtgraham]

The way I've seen it play out time and time again is the most expensive staff are let go first when money starts to run low. If you've never been let go, have you considered you simply might be undercharging?

[calinet6]

I disagree pretty highly. I've seen it in this order:

1. First are the flight risks. They're likely to split soon after a layoff event anyway, so might as well factor them in.

2. Second are functions that would be otherwise crippled or left unable to do their job well (eg: if you fire a flight risk manager and her team is working on a project that will no longer be needed, might as well cut the rest). Smart companies do the whole layoff this way.

3. Performance based. Highly paid employees are generally highly paid for a reason, and their value in terms of revenue impact generally exceeds their pay. Judgement calls will be made about performance; if the company is old school and still doing performance reviews, they'll be taken into account, but they're most likely incorrect anyway.

Politics will always come into play, but people tend to take layoffs more seriously than either hiring or promotion, and make a huge effort to make the best decisions they can to leave the company with a team that they believe works.

[nsajko]

Why do you lay off someone who is expected to quit soon anyways? Doesn't that just add severance pay to your expenses?

[michaelt]

If they're "expected to quit soon" because they seem bored with the place and they've been planning to move on to advance their career, they'll probably go without a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Of course, if they're "expected to quit soon" because they're seething with rage and angry about everything, the reaction might be quite the opposite!

As to why lay off instead of waiting for them to quit, probably because you've been told to reduce headcount now, not at some indeterminate future date.

[phamilton]

Most layoffs are absolute in numbers (you must lay off %10 of your org). So if you don't lay them off, you have to lay off someone else.

[ChuckMcM]

Which is to say, if you use the layoff list as a measure of "value received" and you the company gets some value from keeping you employed, and you get some value by being employed. Then being at the top of the layoff list means you are getting way more value out of being employed than the company is, and being at the bottom of the list means the company is getting way more value out of you being employed. So if you are aggressive shoot for the top, if you are defensive shoot for the bottom :-)

[tryitnow]

This comment pretty much nails it. I've definitely seen a pattern of highly compensated people getting sacked.

If someone does play the aggressive pattern I'd highly recommend saving up a lot of cash so you can weather longer spells of unemployment. This is especially true if you intend to be selective in who you work for after getting laid off.

[gozur88]

I like to shoot for the spot on the list that's one below the last guy that gets laid off.

[danieltillett]

There is an effective upper limit on what you can be paid because of peer issues (companies can't always pay what they should to a high performer because of the effect on other employees), but there is no upper limit to the value you can provide to a company. This can create the situation where an employee is paid the most possible, but they are contributing far more value than they cost. These are the sort of employees that employers will move heaven and earth to retain in any layoff scenario.

[js2]

I don't think so. I think I've contributed value that justifies my salary. But I've also had managers willing to fight for me during layoffs. And I've been fortunate, I suppose, to work for generally decent employers, and never really had a bad manager.

Full disclosure: at my first job, I went from 50K to mid-100's in less than 4 years. My current total compensation is in the high 2xx as an individual contributor. I would be surprised if that were under-market.

[TheOtherHobbes]

>I've been fortunate, I suppose, to work for generally decent employers

Perhaps you've worked for employers when they could afford to be decent - which is not quite the same thing.

Being fired for being too expensive is a very real thing. Ask anyone laid off by IBM recently, or who was put on a PIP and fired for non-performance a few months before qualifying for retirement and a company pension payout.

Tangentially, talk of non-productive employees always reminds me of this:

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DEC/dec.be...

[ElysianEagle]

High 200s as an individual contributor? That's north of what directors at iBanks make in many cases here in NYC (and salaries here are already higher than most other places for tech workers).

My guess is that you're working contract at a very lucrative rate? Or perhaps you're at some kind of financial firm that offers a hefty bonus :-D

[hirsin]

Not at all - see senior dev engineer salaries at Google [1]. High 2xx seems reasonable. I may have missed GP's comment about being in finance, otherwise I don't see the relation to finance salaries.

1. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Software-Engi...

[phamilton]

On Blind (yet another anonymous app for employees at BigCos) there have been dozens of people reporting 300k+ salaries at Google/Facebook/etc. Most recently was a Senior Software Engineer at Netflix with a $420k base (Netflix doesn't really do stock as a significant part of comp).

I'd love for this to be common knowledge.

[gozur88]

I find that memo very odd. It's been my experience people involved in a 21 member "sewing circle" aren't there by choice - they've been directed to attend the meeting by their boss. Where I work sometimes people go to these kinds of BS meetings and then stay late to do their actual work.

[cm3]

Aren't most of the expensive staff those who contribute the most to a company's success? So why would you cull there? I mean what's the thought process behind firing those and keeping those who contribute less?

[cdf]

This will not be true if a long service worker accumulated a huge seniority based increments. Even past high performers who has taken their foot off the pedal would be in this group.

[ArkyBeagle]

It's really more about perceived tactical value than cost.

[pibefision]

with the same rational, I could say "I've been never hit by a train because I always do my job well".

Being part of a layoff has nothing to do with how well you perform in the company. Sometimes, decisions are taken at a higher level, and you excellent performance is not enough to "stop the train".

Yes, productivity is important, but is not enough to stop a layoff.

[js2]

First, I try not to play near the train tracks. Second, when you are known for doing your job well, you often get advance notice that a train is coming and are given an opportunity to get away from the tracks.

[mortenjorck]

Sometimes, the train takes a shortcut. I was (actually quite recently) laid off from a startup that had just closed a major round of funding and moved to a larger office, making layoffs the last thing on anyone's mind. Nearly everyone who got cut was a highly visible contributor, including a very well-liked manager: I could only conclude that the cuts were purely salary-based.

[kasey_junk]

Sometimes. Other times not at all, I was in the room when one team was cut over another even though every metric said they were better. The difference? Lease terms on their office.

Its possible you just are dealing with small sample size right?

[jldugger]

Ah, the risk reduction strategy of never trying hard things. I had a roommate who had a 4.0 GPA doing the same thing; if a class looked like too much effort, he'd drop it. And then because he had a 4.0, the deans would give him permission to enroll in "overload" classes.

It's not a bad way to live, but a few career coaches I've heard talk on the matter suggest that managing a team through a corporate downturn is valuable experience for climbing up the ladders.

[js2]

That is not at all what I said. In fact it's the opposite. I take on plenty challenging projects. What I don't work on is projects that are useless to the company. Geez.

[manacit]

As a corollary to this, I was laid off from the first "real" software development job I ever worked, when I was an intern (though, I was finishing off the summer with a full time offer in hand).

I was interning for a recently acquired ~10 person startup that basically operated like it had before the acquisition. The parent company lost confidence in the product we were building (and a few other things). As a result, they came in one Friday and laid off everyone in one fell swoop, including intern me.

It was a humbling experience at 19 to be handing my company provided laptop to an HR person and signing away the offer letter I had only gotten a few weeks prior. Definitely a good lesson in job permanence in this industry.

Sometimes, it probably doesn't matter how good you are, shit happens.

[kyrra]

I was let go once (been full time dev since 2004). It was when a company was getting ready for a buyout and closed 3 satellite offices one day. Our office was around 50 people and most people were let go indiscriminately.

This same company 2 years prior laid off a friend because his manager didn't like him (his manager was laid off a year after this because he was generally bad at his job). A bunch of people realized this mistake within a two days and they offered him 2 options (termination here was immediate, so he was already gone from the office). He could just leave as was the current course, or they would keep him on for 6 months so he could do some critical work that he was best to handle. He decided to stay for the 6 months and still got the severance package initially offered.

[pink_dinner]

I saved myself at one company for almost two years, because nobody could do my job. I was the only developer and I ran their entire e-commerce store. Pretty much every department was slowly let go and for the last year, I moved all of their systems from an expensive and bloated shipping system and our own hosted/custom cart to Excel and a $100/month hosted e-commerce platform.

At this point, they didn't need me anymore and I was let go (which I knew was going to happen, but I enjoyed the relatively easy paycheck).

I also used that extra free time during work to start the company I am still running today.