[timr]

Just a word of advice for readers who are working at a startup: you will never be wrong by getting as close to the money as possible.

If you are at a startup and working on support tools or platform infrastructure or whatever, maybe you're indispensable. But you'd still be better off if you were doing support tools or platform infrastructure that involves revenue.

(The obvious corollary is that if you work at a startup that doesn't make money, you should find a way to make money, or move to a startup that does make money. I feel like a lot of engineers don't know this.)

[Yoric]

I can testify to that.

Of course, your team can be considered strategic one day, then disbanded the next.

[mywittyname]

I've definitely seen some "strategic" people being shown the door over the past few rounds of layoffs, and at least two boomerangs (laid off, then rehired).

These are very confusing times.

[timr]

You can always be laid off. The chances are much higher if you work on things unrelated to the core business at a startup that is losing money (or worse, not making money).

Obviously, if you're the junior hire on a team of 1,000 people doing third-derivative things that relate to revenue, YMMV.

[ghaff]

It's also the case that things change to the point where "strategic" people become less strategic for any number of reasons (the company changes, they're "rich and tired" to use a marvelous phrase from a colleague, etc.). Under what's been normal circumstances at Big Tech until recently companies often keep such people around anyway because they're probably the sort of people who can be pretty effective fixers with a half-day of work and such people may be happy to keep collecting a bunch of money. But a lot of companies are scrutinizing more today.