| 1. Nobody is safe. But as a general rule: make the product or sell it, don't count it. 2. Loss centers are too simplistic. I mean, hr is a loss center but you still need it. But the question you should ask yourself every day is "am I making the company money today?" If the answer to that is not a clear yes, figure out how to get yourself to that point. 3. Your relationship to your manager matters. And your relationship to your manager's manager. Your job is to always make them look good. If you have conflict....well... 4. I worked for CEO. We would often (and ideally) do this from top down, where we literally reshaped the team that reported to CEO. (And fired members of the current team which didn't find a seat.) Then we would cascade the process layer by layer. 5. Because layers are choosing the layers below them, and often "pulling up" to reduce expensive and useless managers, being a good contributor really matters 6. Sometimes none of this matters. You are in a whole division that is shut down. Tough luck. 7. If you are in a company which is laying off bottom layer people without a huge reduction in middle management. Leave. It is terribly managed. Usually the "workers" are not the problem, it is the huge number of relatively useless middle and mid senior management who are much more costly. Ideally they should go first. |