I was laid off from Atlassian this/last week. Since then I've been playing Satisfactory for 12 hours a day.
Crazy thing is, I delivered optimizations that saved 1m USD over the last 12 months, with another optimization in-flight that would save another 1m USD. I thought that was enough to protect me from layoffs/PIPs - I guess no one was counting.
AI is just an excuse for layoffs which IMO CEOs are trying to use to recover share prices from the SaaS-pocalypse. Looks like layoffs aren't hitting the same for stock prices as they once were.
It's a fools errand to ever believe in job security. Even if you're absolutely right on your importance, management can always remain stupid longer than you can remain employed.
It truly feels like a farce. I've survived a few rounds of layoffs and I've seen both shitty engineers and our best engineers let go. I assume our good ones are too expensive? It seems like HR just does some spreadsheet magic to grab people without any regard for performance or title.
Not OP, and nothing makes it impossible, but from my experience in big companies, being visible is way more useful than being productive.
I got further faster by just answering emails right away than by churning out code. I got constant kudos, which got me promoted, and invited to more meetings, which led to less actual work. All because I just started replying to emails sent to our group. In retrospect it feels pretty perverse.
In lean companies and startups...perhaps not so much.
Having worked in a very large company for the past two decades now, one of the best career advices I ever got is about how you measure if you are a „good employee“.
It is very simple: you are a good employee if your boss(es) think you are.
That’s it. Nothing else matters in terms of career advancement or retainment.
Crazy thing is, I delivered optimizations that saved 1m USD over the last 12 months, with another optimization in-flight that would save another 1m USD. I thought that was enough to protect me from layoffs/PIPs - I guess no one was counting.
AI is just an excuse for layoffs which IMO CEOs are trying to use to recover share prices from the SaaS-pocalypse. Looks like layoffs aren't hitting the same for stock prices as they once were.