How to Not Get Laid Off

All slaves will be sorted, and a line will be drawn. How do you stay above the cut line and keep your job?

In a recent post, I wrote from a first hand perspective what a layoff day will look like, feel like, smell like when it comes to your W2. If you stick around long enough, and especially through interest rate fluctuations and business cycles, you will see one.

When layoffs come to your W2, will you be ready?

You now know what to expect, but how do you avoid getting cut? Read on.

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Honestly, a wild curve ball like mass layoffs still can take you out, even if you execute perfectly. That’s just how life goes.

But, there is a lot you can do to drastically reduce your risk.

Keeping your W2 is critical to your goal of financial freedom for you and your family. A base level income and benefits will let you pay your bills and build wifi-money on the side.

So let’s get into some basic, some counterintuitive, and some outright autistic tactics you can use to remain above the layoff line when your W2 ranks you and pulls out a red pen.

Win Friends & Influence People

Let’s get this one out of the way.

You need to be liked and respected. Obviously.

In your personal life yes, of course, but also in your W2.

What do you think promos are?

A “good job son” from daddy? A reward for your good work?

No, it is hush money, a retention bribe, and a reflection of how well liked and respected you are by management, and how much they think they need to pay you to stay.

Don’t doubt for a second that unlikeable, curmudgeons will be passed over for less technically competent but likeable colleagues come promo time.

And likewise, that the curmudgeons will be top of the list when layoffs come and give managers easy cover to do some spring cleaning and take out team nuisances like the trash.

It doesn’t matter what you have to do, but you must do it.

Read Dale Carnegie, go to some support group, write a mantra you repeat every hour. Whatever it takes, you must drill it into your head and reflect it in your words and actions so you become likeable and worthy of respect.

Over time, your colleagues and manager will notice.

Or worse case, you get fired or quit, and chalk up the L. Then, get a new job and with a blank slate you make an excellent first impression now that you’ve smoothed over your rough edges.

What does it look like to be liked and respected?

• When you talk, do people listen, nod with intense agreement, take interest?

• When you suggest a course of action, do people follow it?

• When you travel to an offsite, do you have colleagues who reach out to ask where you’re staying, when you’re going to dinner, can they come?

• Does your manager use 1:1s to confide in you their worries and concerns?

• Does senior management know your name, what you work on, and message to thank you for your work?

• Do people laugh or smirk at your jokes?

If you can’t immediately think of multiple examples of situations in the past month which check each of the above, you likely have some room to improve.

Being liked and respected is a critical component of W2-maxing. You will be given the benefit of the doubt, receive perks, be promoted faster, and most importantly for the topic at hand, be much less likely to be laid off.

Build A Diversified Portfolio

While applicable to promos depending on your level criteria, having a diverse portfolio of projects can be critical to avoiding layoffs.

Layoffs often coincide with a contraction of scope. Projects are shelved or shut down. Anyone too deeply and exclusively involved with one of the cancelled initiatives will be top of the list to leave.

Though a delicate dance, depending on your manager, you should seek out other projects outside of your team to be engaged and involved in. You should be shipping public demos in these projects so that management sees you less as exclusively involved in your team’s work, but also contributing across the organization on other projects.

If you’re lucky, the other projects you choose may remain staffed while your team projects are canned. Or vice versa. Either way, you don’t put all your eggs in one basket and can improve your chances come layoffs.

Unfortunately, no strategy is fool proof and while I have mostly seen colleagues laid off because their project was cancelled, I have seen other tragic cases.

For example, one top performing colleague helped a bit with another team’s project.