
10 steps to take before you get laid off - mathewgj
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/12/04/10-essential-steps-to-take-before-youre-laid-off/
======
ardit33
"it’s easier to keep a job than find one. We’re hearing about companies
cutting 25% or 33% of their headcount. That means you need to be in the top
67% or 75% to avoid a pink slip. Other than an entire plant, division or
office closure, the decisions about whom to keep and whom to let go are based
on performance, salary and redundancy of position."

Unfortunately this is not always true. I have seen two really good developers
loosing theirs jobs recently. If you are paid too well, then you are in the
x-ross if layoffs come.

While your manager might appreciate your skills, some hire management just
views you as a cost, and really Don"T realise that some people are better in
order of magnitudes.

When that spreadsheet comes, it is ordered by salary, and the top people are
the first to be scrutinized, even though they good performers, and worth the
money, they might get the axe.

Unfair, but this is how it is.

~~~
gaius
Layoffs are almost never personal, esp. not in large companies. The decision
to lay people off and how many is made at a level well above caring about the
performance of any individual. The HR department decides who gets the chop,
and they don't care about your performance either; they care about the company
not getting sued, basically their only objective is that when the dust settles
the company has a plausible gender/race/whatever balance and no-one's claiming
unfair dismissal.

If a company starts laying off then you want to get out of there while there's
still the cash to pay a decent severance package, because the writing's on the
wall.

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mchang16
#11 - Take advantage of your health and dental insurance. If you haven't gone
to the doctor or the dentist in awhile, or if you have an appointment that you
should make in the coming months - make it now!

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astine
#10 is my favorite.

Anyway, I think most of the list is good advice in general, even if you aren't
planning on getting laid off. It basically boils down to: keeping your skills
up and maintaining your contacts. It's who you know _and_ what you know.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Actually, it is better to start a new job than to be worried about being layed
off from the one you already have =D

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biohacker42
A modest proposal:

No more top 10 or 10 steps or whatever pithy articles on HN.

P.S.

I am only slightly more serious about this then eatin' babies.

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rokhayakebe
#3. I don't "really" have one. But one can feel free to check my HN profile
and you'll know what interests me (submissions), what I think of most issues
(comments) and also how I react to criticism or when someone offends me
(troll). All in there buddy.

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flashgordon
Actually I liked #3 quiet a bit.

"Start a blog that contains at least 50% professional material"

I think atleast in a technical field that really shows what you are passionate
about.

~~~
srn
Does anyone have suggestions for a good place to host if you don't feel like
doing it yourself?

~~~
cschneid
Do it yourself. Dreamhost + One click WP install == working wordpress. You
don't even have to ever log into the terminal. Plus having your own domain
name makes you look more professional.

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lallysingh
The title's funnier if you remove the last word.

~~~
river_styx
That list wouldn't be nearly as useful for this particular demographic,
though.

~~~
eru
You'd better prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime event.

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GrandMasterBirt
Work out??? Oh no no no no no. If you get hired because you look good, either
you are incompetent (work out and do it man) or you should not take the job.
ALL jobs I interviewed for dug deep within my brain to get a taste of my
problem solving skills and knowledge of programming. Good people skills help,
if you can get along with the interviewers (a few laughs to ease the tension)
then you have a better shot than someone else, but that's where it ends.

If it is a choice between a weak candidate who looks good, is fun, and has a
ton of linked in buddies, or a strong candidate who is worse at all of the
above, I doubt the pretty face is going to get the job.

~~~
eoyola
You seem defensive. Don't you believe it's better to be physically fit and
energetic than not, or do you argue that fitness and health is truly
irrelevant to your role as an employee?

You could suppose that there is an unfair cognitive bias at work (see /beauty
premium/) which could favor one candidate over the other. But think about how
an interviewer would consider the physically fit you versus the physically
unfit you. This is the real point, not how you compare to someone else.

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time_management
#11. Make friends _at your current job_ \-- as many as possible, preferably
with some being "diagonal-up" (e.g. not your boss, but at a higher level).
Bonus points if they are unlikely to be cut. You will need them as references
if your boss gives you a bad one (which you should check 3-5 weeks after being
laid off, using a professional ref-checking service).

Friends from the old company are not just potential references, but also
possible co-founders or recruits at the new job.

#12. Move all your side projects onto off-work computers, and try to make sure
that they're deleted from your work machines nightly and automatically. (Of
course, this is not the time to do something moronic, so only delete true side
projects, e.g. things that the company doesn't know or care about but that you
still need to unambiguously own for future purposes.)

#13. This one applies mainly to large companies. In good economic times, you
want to make yourself as replaceable and obsolete as possible (write well-
documented, easy-to-follow code) so you can move on to more interesting
projects and, if laid off, leave on good terms to a better job. In bad
economic times, try to make yourself irreplaceable, even if that means making
your code difficult to use. If you feel the need to be unethical, you can hide
time-delay bugs. At worst, you'll be asked to train someone else in the
technology and offered a severance package in order to do it, which is better
than being let go cold.

~~~
gruseom
_In bad economic times, try to make yourself irreplaceable, even if that means
making your code difficult to use. If you feel the need to be unethical, you
can hide time-delay bugs._

Wow.

What this sort of thing does to your soul is far worse than being laid off.
Anyone who believes that they need a job more than they need integrity or
self-respect has some work to do, and some fears to face. And making code
obscure on purpose _is_ unethical, and ethics that fluctuate with economic
conditions aren't ethics to begin with.

Edit: For a different perspective, I ran this by a couple of guys where I'm
working. One of them offered a more succinct response: "Maybe if you did a
good job, they'd keep you, [expletive deleted]."

~~~
time_management
I made an error in using the phrase "in bad economic times". Economic
conditions are actually fairly irrelevant, because one can be in a positive
career situation despite a terrible economy, and vice versa. I meant to say
"in a bad career situation" and, specifically, a truly terrible one.

I know people who've been put in the humiliating position of being outsourced,
while being expected to train the cheaply-hired replacements. That's the sort
of situation in which obfuscation, in the hope of having, at least, the option
to come on later as a consultant, may be an appropriate strategy. Why is it
unethical? It's not nice, but it's not nice either (though not unethical) for
the company to fire all the American staff and replace them with overseas
workers at 1/3 of the cost.

So I'll back down from "in bad economic times" because, really, obfuscation
only makes sense in rare and outright terrible situations. I've never needed
to do it, never done it, and I don't even know how often it works. What I'll
say is this: I've known people who've been laid off recently, and one of the
warning signs is when they are asked to suddenly place a high priority on
clarifying previous work, and it's definitely not in their interest to do so.

~~~
gruseom
_I meant to say "in a bad career situation" and, specifically, a truly
terrible one_

Well, who put themselves in that situation?

 _I know people who've been put in the humiliating position of being
outsourced, while being expected to train the cheaply-hired replacements_

No one is required to remain in such a humiliating position.

 _Why is it unethical?_

Because it's your job, not to mention your duty, to contribute the best code
you can. Not to mention not actively destroying it.

 _obfuscation only makes sense in rare and outright terrible situations_

Courage and honesty are what make sense in rare and outright terrible
situations. What the person who takes the sneaky, greedy route under duress
never gets to learn is how many benefits flow from standing up to what you
fear.

 _I've never needed to do it, never done it, and I don't even know how often
it works._

Yet you are prepared to offer it as advice to others?

 _I've known people who've been laid off recently, [who were] asked to
suddenly place a high priority on clarifying previous work, and it's
definitely not in their interest to do so._

There's a big difference between taking responsibility for your own interests
and actively screwing the other guy in order to (allegedly) protect yourself.
See what allenbrunson said.

 _So I'll back down from "in bad economic times"_

You've missed the point. Ethics that fluctuate with one's career situation
aren't ethics to begin with either.

Look... I wouldn't write this if it were just about critiquing your post.
Personally, I am far from being a master of appropriate behavior. But I can't
emphasize enough how rewarding it is to get to a place within yourself where
you just won't do shit like this (and how punishing it is to live with the
beliefs that make you think it's ok).

~~~
time_management
_Well, who put themselves in that situation?_

Variable. My first job out of school was at an MDC (medium-sized dumb company)
where, 3 months in, there was a management change. The new middle-manager
began sabotaging the best people-- taking them off their coding projects and
putting them on non-coding office work-- in order to bore them out of the
company, thus eliminating the people he saw as threats to his position in the
future.

The 3 best new hires were laid off within 6 months of this happening, myself
for the "crime" of seeking employment elsewhere, one for refusing a
"promotion" into an ethically dubious role, and one for reasons too
complicated to get into, and all of this was through no fault of their own.
Luckily, this was during a great economy, and all 3 of us got better jobs
within a few weeks.

 _No one is required to remain in such a humiliating position._

What if the company says they will give negative references if he doesn't
train the replacements? Is this not coercion? This is an unusual case, but
it's not entirely uncommon. In the pharmaceutical industry, there've been M&A
cases where people kept on at the acquired company were forbidden from giving
references for their laid-off colleagues. In BDCs, this sort of political
sleaze occurs more often than you'd think. Again, I'm assuming that you're
"spoiled" by startups and technology companies, where one's career progress
has a high correlation to the quality of one's work, and wherein internal
political sleaze is exceedingly rare.

 _You've missed the point. Ethics that fluctuate with one's career situation
aren't ethics to begin with either._

I don't know why "situational ethics" get such a negative review, when all
ethics are situational, the situation including the consequences of each
option. For example, it's unethical to steal, right? On the other hand, some
people must steal in order to avoid starvation, and it's arguably much worse,
from an ethical standpoint, to submit oneself to pointless and preventable
death. Ethics is about pursuing the morally best option among those that are
actually available, and which choice is best depends on the consequences (to
oneself, and to others) of each, i.e. the situation.

~~~
xjxch39
I believe that there is a phrase that CEO's and Most Paid People in the
company that is used to everyone else to keep the little guys smouthered in
the position they sit: "the bottom line." They use this when they realize that
if they don't do something unethical or completely brilliant, there will be a
bottom line that little guy will have to deal with. He will be fired or
they'll cut his hours, or they will give less health insurance and higher
premiums and deductables, etc. Somehow the little guy is going to get cut so
the irreplaceable CEO can go on a $600,000 necessary cruise that the little
guy wasn't even invited to. Look at working in retail. It is a nightmare!
There you are so replaceable, they can't keep positions filled for very long
because people either "get themselves out of that situation" or they remain
humiliated and keep collecting a smaller check. The only way to be truly
irreplaceable is to CREATE something. Because once your one-of-a-kind creation
exists, you have added something to the world that wasn't there before. So for
it to be authentic, it must remain irreplaceable.

