> It’s not you that’s critical, it’s the job you fill that’s critical.
I think at a big enough company the people making layoff decisions don't know or care what job is critical. In some cases that means your job wasn't as critical as you thought. But I've also seen layoffs that seem just downright stupid. Literally saw someone laid off then re-hired to a different team a couple weeks later with a substantial bump to their pay.
At a certain level of abstraction nothing will save you. Critical job? Bean counters don't know the specifics of each team or project. High level? Cost too much, not contributing enough to short term goals.
I was once told that a lot of executive level management was based off gut instinct more than cold logical decision making. It would not surprise me if this also applied to deciding who is laid off.
It’s your manager and skip level’s job to make sure your VP knows the company is fucked if they lay your team off. I can guarantee you that no matter how evil Oracle is — the king of bean counters and mismanagement — they aren’t going to accidentally lay off the core Oracle cloud teams. Your job is to get onto those teams.
Every business has key teams, you just have to find them. For some businesses tge key teams are not in your domain (non-tech company) and you are just a cost center. The only option is to jump ship to a tech first company.
> I was once told that a lot of executive level management was based off gut instinct more than cold logical decision making. It would not surprise me if this also applied to deciding who is laid off.
It would surprise me if it didn't apply to deciding who is laid off.
I think at a big enough company the people making layoff decisions don't know or care what job is critical. In some cases that means your job wasn't as critical as you thought. But I've also seen layoffs that seem just downright stupid. Literally saw someone laid off then re-hired to a different team a couple weeks later with a substantial bump to their pay.
At a certain level of abstraction nothing will save you. Critical job? Bean counters don't know the specifics of each team or project. High level? Cost too much, not contributing enough to short term goals.
I was once told that a lot of executive level management was based off gut instinct more than cold logical decision making. It would not surprise me if this also applied to deciding who is laid off.