Couple things to add. First, very few teams will be all safe or all cut. The vast majority of leaders/teams will be asked to make some contribution to reducing cost. The amount of cost to reduce will vary from team to team. Second, companies frequently do not jump directly to layoffs of employees. If there are a significant amount of contractors, they are usually the first to be impacted. Then companies will sometimes offer early retirement or voluntary job reduction. This isn't universal, but I have seen it many times in larger orgs.
One thing I forgot to mention was I was promoted during the great recession by hedgehogging because more scope came my way, not because I was seeking it. Continue the conversation on my Discord: https://discord.gg/HFVMbQgRJJ Check out my Patreon if you'd like to support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/ALifeEngineered
Came back to this video today, my company closed my entire office because the lease was up and told us we have 2 months to find another job. Thanks for the advice, Steve
Came back to this months later. Just wanted to say great advice. I followed this for the last ~3 months. I survived a big layoff. I'm doing what I can to hang in there. Thank you for the great content. I hope all of you reading this make it through these times. 🙏
Thanks!
You're still a young pup. I can't wait to see what wisdom you acquired already in your short time on Earth.
"Just take off your shoes before coming into the house...." that is such a good phrase that encompasses the type of situational awareness, common courtesy, and and a general "please have and show respect for others" type of mentality that can sometimes be forgotten or lacking.
I love devs like you that help fix recurring issues that us operations people run into. Its such important and impactful work to the client, but I feel a lot of devs act like they are above it. I bet people love having you on the team
The impact won't last, code is everywhere nowadays. Unlike the 2001 tech bubble, code is essential now. A modern car has 100 million lines of code. And anything that has code needs to be maintained or competition will take over. Like for the video :)
Solid advice thank you. One suggestion I have for the videos is to use more contrasting colors like for the leaf node example. People who are colorblind can't easily make out the different colors.
I was impacted by the layoffs. Used to work at a big tech company but they reduced their employee head count which included me. It took a while just because of the state of the market currently but I was able to get a new position paying as much as I was receiving at my other job. I’m just so glad I was able to do that because I know the same can’t be said for many other people. To anyone reading this that was also a part of the layoffs: keep your head up, and keep searching you got this
Just got laid off and honestly I'm believing it might be a blessing in disguise. The amount of support and recruiters at better companies flocking at my LinkedIn profile is nothing short of wholesome. I live in Brazil and a lot of opportunities at companies abroad that pay well even for remote work is a lot, and it was something I dreamt of. Hoping to be employed again at a much better place at least for a while by focusing at being a hedgehog. Thanks a lot for this video, great as always.
One feedback on the promotion aspect: while what you say is true for most situations, there are some who excel at expanding scope during a downturn. These...are the spikes of a hedgehog. The way they seek impact/scope changes: instead of trying to grab more ambitious projects, they now focus on making organizational changes that can better the organization's ability to survive. So while they may be distracted from their core work, their efforts are recognized. There are also instances where people are already performing at the next level who need to spend little bandwidth to get their current level work done anyway. These are nuanced situations where "not seeking a promotion" is not as applicable.
I appreciate that you go beyond your working hours to share this valuable information. Thank you so much for being transparent about everything.
Ok thanks for information
The Gold Medal I won being named as the Most Valuable Peer, didn't shield me from a Global Reduction of the Workforce.
This channel is a bloody goldmine! Thank you for making those videos.
Well said and no doubt. We dominate don't be cocky in these times
I work at a large tech company, and we just started hiring again -- for an intern position and also just re-hired an intern. At least in Canada, I'm not worrying too much for the moment.
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