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My company has layoffs a couple times per year it seems. Somehow I’ve been around almost 20 years, though I’ve rarely felt my job was secure in that time. Sometimes the layoffs seem random or simply wrong. The people making the decisions often don’t know the people. Though I have seen where people end up on the list and the boss saves them somehow. Other times it’s totally out of their hands. Like the director who gave someone a bad review to send a message to the person to get their act together. It worked, the person really improved. However, the layoffs were based on those old reviews, so the wrong person got let go. I’ve found that it’s not really about what you do for the customer, it’s about making your manager’s life easier. The people who seem like a lot of work to manage seem to be first on the list to go, weighted against perceived impact. So if you’re relatively new to the company and haven’t actively and noticeably made your manager’s life better, and your impact to the final product is mainly seen by you and those right next to you, it could be easy to end up on the list to be laid off, even if the work you did was good. At least that’s how I’ve seen it through the dozens of layoffs I’ve watched happen. Even within my team now, the person who should be laid off is our scrum master. He’s not good. However, the boss has this idea that the scrum master will make his life easier eventually, or getting rid of him will at least create a gap that he would need to fill until someone else can get into that role. So that guy is still here and has been given years of time, failing repeatedly. Meanwhile, the last guy who did get laid off did actual work. He was still a bit green and needed some direction and the occasional watchful eye, but he was a net positive to the team, and was getting better, while the scrum master actively hurts us and shows 0 improvement. |