That's incorrect. Plenty of high-performing people were laid off from key projects in the last 2 years.
Most tech layoffs had directors needing to meet a quota, so no matter how good people were or how core their work were to the company, they had to pick people to be laid-off.
Once software is built, it takes much less effort to maintain it.
Middle management is vunerable because it's operational(not tactical or strategic), you can increase a lot the wingspan of a manager of managers without having big consequences and tech companies have done it and cut out the managers that didn't have the minimum wingspan.
Job prospects for managers of managers at the moment isn't good, but I'm guessing any of them can still jump back one step and go back to a manager of ICs and still do a good job.
I'd recommend that anybody that works in tech, no matter what rank they are (even director), still keep their tech chops up to date to a certain degree, you never know if you'll still be perceived by your peers as somebody that can bring value.
And it's simpler to prove you can deliver value by being a senior engineer than a VP.
Overall, for those that were laid off from big tech, I hope they end up actually founding new businesses or moving back to startups, building real stuff.
Re-read the part on making the value legible to the company. That's the same as you saying "prove you can deliver value".
If you can't do that, or if you truly don't add value, then yes, your number will come up. And while there might be a quota, the way folks will look at that is "who'd least impact my team if I laid them off".
Which also means that you should avoid being purely operational. If that's all you do... Maybe you should treat your operational work as a paid job search phase, because that will only last as long as there's plenty of money.
Most tech layoffs had directors needing to meet a quota, so no matter how good people were or how core their work were to the company, they had to pick people to be laid-off.
Once software is built, it takes much less effort to maintain it.
Middle management is vunerable because it's operational(not tactical or strategic), you can increase a lot the wingspan of a manager of managers without having big consequences and tech companies have done it and cut out the managers that didn't have the minimum wingspan.
Job prospects for managers of managers at the moment isn't good, but I'm guessing any of them can still jump back one step and go back to a manager of ICs and still do a good job.
I'd recommend that anybody that works in tech, no matter what rank they are (even director), still keep their tech chops up to date to a certain degree, you never know if you'll still be perceived by your peers as somebody that can bring value.
And it's simpler to prove you can deliver value by being a senior engineer than a VP.
Overall, for those that were laid off from big tech, I hope they end up actually founding new businesses or moving back to startups, building real stuff.