Layoffs (66)

I recently asked my manager and my skip manager for an international transfer since my spouse had relocated. Upon being asked how long I could wait, I mentioned I could wait till the end of the year for a transfer, else I might leave, mentioning that it's very difficult to stay away from family. Also, I was personally really burnt out at that time and wasn't interested in working there anyway, so wasn't scared of the repercussions of such a conversation.

Now I regret doing so, because it's getting very difficult to job hunt right now, and I'm worried about being laid off - they might think that I'm no longer invested in the company and will leave ultimately. I also think that what if my spouse also gets laid off in his firm due to the economy, and it just causes me a lot of anxiety, although we do have enough savings.

In short, the thought of both of us getting laid off is extremely discomforting and causes palpitations.

I keep wondering - how do couples manage the anxiety/stress of both spouses being laid off?

I have a new grad offer from Amazon, which was forcefully deferred earlier this year.

I currently work as an SRE (which I don't want long-term), and my offer is for an SDE role in the same team I interned at when I was there pre-layoffs. Plus despite me working for >6 months elsewhere, they're not increasing my comp in any way.

I'm attracted to the Amazon job since it's a SWE role and that's something I want career-wise, but given that the company and current economic situation have been kind of unstable, I'm hesitant to join. Does anyone have any advice for me on how to navigate this? I'm on a student Visa so I guess that's why the threat of layoffs is a bit higher in my eyes.

Just another laid-off SWE here. I have an interview coming up at a popular tech company.

How can I explain getting laid off in the interview? I am concerned that there is a stigma in tech that layoffs target low performers, especially since only part of my team got laid off. They never told us the layoff criteria, but I think I got targeted because I was more junior. I don't want to reveal my level for the company I'm applying to.

Hi Taro. I got laid off in April from AWS. I interned at NASA JPL and I am considering going back fulltime and continuing to apply to tech companies. I don't have an offer but I am hopeful I would be able to connect with a team since I interned there one year and have 1.5 YOE at AWS. I have some concerns about joining JPL, because they are prototype and research focused.

• They don't have many production systems or serve customer traffic.
• They also operate mostly in small and independent groups so the engineering standards can differ a lot. The research group I interned at had poor engineering and code quality compared to AWS.
• The engineering environment is different than corporate. Some technologies and experiences missing at JPL that are common in tech are pipelines (CI/CD), TPS, tickets, oncall, debugging large and distributed systems, customer traffic, metrics, operational reviews.
• JPL pays poorly and has slow growth. You can be there 10 years and make less than an SDE-1 in FAANG.

I don't have any visa issues. Finances are not a problem. Currently I have very low expenses and good savings because I didn't RTO and I am living with my parents. I have 1.5 YOE at AWS and 3 years of internships before that. I see the market picking up so I am tempted to keep trying for a tech company.

Another thing to consider is that there is a lot of inertia when you join a job. I will have little time to look for other jobs in the first few months because I will be busy onboarding. I will also have less time to look for jobs and study for interviews.

Please give advice :)

Sorry if this seems like a rant. Trying to collect my own thoughts.
I have been at my current company as a mid level backend engineer (a startup - around 10-12 years old, went public recently) for around 4-5 years and have a total of 6 years of work experience.

I feel like there has not been much career growth. Got my first promotion after an year of joining the company and not much thereafter. Thus, feeling very lost about where to go next from here.

In the current climate, we had our recent round of layoffs in the organisation. Also, I don't feel very good about some of the things in the organisation such as the stuff I am working on. I don't feel I am learning enough. It is just business requirement - one after another, that too often getting cancelled. Last project I worked on for 3 months, got cancelled after that due to changing priorities. Stock price is plummeting as well. I feel like the best way forward is to restart my own learning journey - what are your thoughts? I used to be one of the top performers in my current and past company and even got awards around 3 times in last 6 years. I tried to work hard for promotions as well, but even after multiple rounds of my manager asking me to do things such as leading the team, multiple XFN projects, infra level revamps etc. - I did not get a promotion. I asked my manager if there is a list of things I should do consistently for a good enough time and if then, we'll be able to make a case for me. He said, that I am trying to gamify the system, but I was only trying to set goals for me. Now, I feel somewhere midway, I have lost my motivation. Feeling a little depressed and often evade work, just coasting to get by.

I want to take charge of my life again and be positive. Quite often I think about other career choices, but have always been in love with CS (and math in my childhood, particularly due to them being intellectually challenging). Just want to make up for the time I lost, and want to do some things I am proud of. I often think of my life being pointless in last couple of years. And want to get a renewed sense of motivation and be excited for the things I work on.

I feel like joining a fast paced place or somewhere I can learn a lot (even outside of work) might help. Don't feel very happy about my current situation though.

Given the current economic volatility and uncertainty as well as the hard-to-measure business value of cost centre teams (like infrastructure or platform), would it be sensible to join such a team?

I am a mid-level software engineer and expecting layoff in the coming month. As the market situation is very tight right now, I am thinking to take a break to give myself enough time to prepare and land a good opportunity instead of just accepting something which is below my calibre. I have 10+ years of experience and never had a career gap in my resume. How much gap in a resume is acceptable and not questioned (or frowned upon) by recruiters or hiring managers? Blind posts tell me that it is taking some people 6 months or even 8 months to land into a new role.

Hi Taro. When choosing a team, we also have to choose their specialization and tools. If the specialization is niche and the team uses exclusively internal tools I won't gain any transferable skills. I got laid off from AWS and I am realizing that I have little transferable skills. I used mostly internal tools. Believe it or not, many AWS teams do not use AWS extensively.

How can I choose a team or focus area for transferable skills? I was considering pivoting into Android and IOS development because I see many job openings for these.

Hi all. I joined AWS after university and recently got laid off. I have 2YOE at AWS and a 1 year internship at NASA.

During undergrad the only thing I stood out for was having multiple publications. I suspect really talented undergrads in CS programs where targetting FAANG so there wasn't much competition. Maybe I was good at research though.

I am a US Citizen and I went to a medium tier university for undergrad. The name is recognizable but it's not impressive. What kinds of doors does attending a top university for MS CS open for me? I might be able to get into a top school like PHYMS.

Most people tell me that top schools are not useful after getting a couple YOE. I remember I was talking with someone that went to MIT for undergrad and they told me that there is a company that will basically give students $100,000 to do a startup and all they needed was an idea. They told me that it was pretty easy to get and many people got that at MIT. That's not something that would ever happen at my university.

I have some concerns:

1. I am not interested in doing research. I want to stay a backend SWE. MS CS is getting away from that.
2. I don't need a visa. Graduate programs in my experience are usually for international students that need a visa.
3. The opportunity cost and tuition cost of doing a masters is huge.

If someone was in a company for 5 years out of which some years were in one country while he was laid off in another country, What is the general guideline wrt severance payment?

Is it paid on pro-rated basis or total months would simply be multiplied with the monthly salary of place where they were laid off from?

I recently found myself in a fortunate yet challenging situation due to a layoff. I have been granted a two-months period plus optional month(s) in lieu of severance, to secure my next job as I need a visa sponsorship. I aim to land a senior mobile developer role here in the UK, in any non-big tech company (tier 3/4). Considering the urgency of securing a visa, I am open to exploring any roles with sponsorship.

To make the most of this time, here is how I am spending my time so far, I would appreciate any input and suggestions to make the most out of this situation.

1. Dedicate 2 hours daily to solving easy LeetCode problems - some tier 3/4 companies do ask some easy/medium questions

2. Spend 2 hours daily applying for jobs on LinkedIn, Dm'ng connections, seeking referrals etc

3. 2/3 hours Develop a side mobile app project to practice and familiarize with recent patterns - most likely needed to succeed in take-home tests.

4. Behaviour and system design - study and practice only when I have those rounds scheduled.

I wonder if there are any other aspects I should optimize for during this period. Are there any specific areas or resources you recommend focusing on to maximize my chances of success?

I have recently been laid-off, I was working as a Frontend developer for almost two years. I have prepared my resume and started applying for roles but I have not been in touch with the interview scene in a while. Should I just grind Leetcode?

Hello,

I got laid off this January, and I am trying to find guidance on finding my next job. I have almost 4 years of experience (2 FAANGs). So far I had 7 first round interviews, made it to final round on 2 (failed 5), and got one offer, which is a really big pay cut (govt job) and I have to relocate far, so I am not really wanting to take that offer.

I am applying for front-end roles so my prep varies between leetcode (50%), JavaScript and front-end tech questions (30%) and System Design (20%). I was very shaky on algorithms and front end, I wish I studied more before interviewing (I kinda freaked out and jumped too soon to the job hunt with spoiled skills).

Almost every new job opening is a pay cut, even for senior positions (I wasn’t senior). Is the market really that bad now? I’ve seen posts on Reddit and other places of people getting a job quickly after getting laid off, and not only that, it is a pay increase, which makes me feel like I am doing something wrong, since I’ve been job hunting for 4 months now. Sometimes I get demoralized after so many rejections but I keep trying every day to get better skill wise, I feel like I got laid off because I was an underperformer. Even though I was never put on disciplinary action, it did take me a lot of effort to understand and accomplish my tasks, unlike other of my coworkers, so I keep reflecting if I could have done something different.

Anyone in the same position than me or has experienced this before could give some advice? Or any comments are appreciated, thanks.

I was laid off recently at a startup. Despite in my opinion having a very high impact and performing well, I was in the group of the 20% of staff laid off. I recently received an email asking how my job search is going and if I would be interested in returning. I'm getting a few interviews here and there but the search is going slow. I was also making a good salary there that I'm not sure I would be able to find again in this current market. I'm feeling conflicted about whether or not it is in my best interest to return or decline.

A quick TL;DR of my career, I started off at Lockheed Martin doing Linux C++ and Java development with a bit of SRE work building out Jenkins+Docker CI/CD infrastructure for my team. I then went to do frontend web development on Google Cloud. However, after around eight months, I wasn't too confident on my trajectory within the team, so I moved over to a team outside of Cloud. In this role, I did Android development with some C++ backend work mixed in. Looking at my background, I've worn several hats and more or less had multiple different roles during my ~4 year career.

This is all because I care more about the end result of my work instead of the work itself. The language, tech stack, etc that I am using is not what gives me fulfillment. Unfortunately, it seems like I'm getting punished for this mindset, as every employer wants someone who has been using the same stack their whole career. It's not surprising given how recruiters and anyone in the hiring process is seeking to find any reason to say "No" to you. They have become adversaries that one has to take down, since passing Google's hiring bar now no longer carries weight. Each interview I fail to pass just appears to perpetuate a narrative that I was nothing more than a COVID overhire and deserved to be laid off.

Is there a gainful role out there for me, or am I going to just have to settle for some dead-end job that will just drag these career woes on?

I'm currently working in a product which was ramped down from 19 members to 5. All remaining 5 are new to product.

Current state is:

• We get lots of escalation, and it's good learning in solving them. However, pressure is enormous and also less work life balance, due to Severity 1 issues at times.
• There is no feature development for now, mainly due to less bandwidth and also all new folks in team, who are ramping up.
• There are other priorities like Maintainence of services/system (DevOps), Security, Integration with other products, minor must do feature enhancements reported by customer
• Customers are dropping because we are at times not able to provide the enhancements asked in stipulated time

When i initially started with this project, I thought it would slow down, but there are spikes at times which results in working at whole weekends (Happened four times in 2 months).

Should I leave this product and try to move to other product or company where i should look for balanced work and timeline, product with active development or continue in current one with an hope it would slow down in near future?

I am an SDE1 that was recently laid off from AWS (~2 YOE total). Lately, I have been reflecting on what I wanted to do/what really excites me. I really enjoy software development and while I do want to get another job one day, I wanted to use this opportunity to scratch my entrepreneurial itch and create apps/websites/side-projects for fun or for many small business owners I know that need someone to create software for their business. I'm not sure how long this "break" will be but I would say ~2 to 3 months time. Part of this is inspired by Alex Chiou's love for side projects.

I understand that finding a job will take some time as well, so the total gap on my resume that will be filled by this freelance work/applying might be ~6 months total. I understand that there are other posts on Taro that talk about the impact of a career break but this won't necessarily be a break per se. On my resume I will put this down as freelance work I completed for clients and will be prepared to show potential employers a portfolio of what I did.

I was wondering if this would negatively reflect on my application when applying for SDE jobs again/will make it harder for me to land a job. Alternatively, I could begin applying and interview prep now and only work on these projects on the side. Thanks.

Regular layoffs + cut-down of perks + companies' continued focus on AI may not result in creation of huge number of new SWE positions at Big Tech anytime this year. Just my opinion.

What suggestions do seniors in this forum suggest to AI-proof your career? I agree that coding is not the only thing we do. Then what are other hard skills differentiator for a SWE? Communication, System Design skills will get easier and easier to master given plethora of improved content on the internet.

Should we start integrating AI in all our projects/workstreams in order to stay sharp?

What are the some of the fundamentals to have a strong product sense for a software engineer?

During layoffs many engineers are working in war time mode vs peace time, especially the companies still figuring out Product market fit.

So how can I as an engineer help or challenge product direction, read data insights, do user research, etc where I am not directly involved.

I feel like there is lot going on around user research and the product goal is set but how can I provide valuable input make sure we are heading to right direction and at the same time keep working on right technical things to make product closer to its goal.

For anyone who stayed in the company during mass layoffs, how was the experience after staying?
The second question is, did you try to negotiate more money? When staying meant missing the exit package and potentially more work in the future. Is there a way to put the case forward for the compensation revisit?

As a mid-level (not senior yet) SDE, what are the core skills I should be consistently developing to grow my career, not only for promotion within the company, but also for personal growth, and to get ready for diverse opportunities years ahead?

I know we have covered lots of topics, like DS & Algo for interviews in case you suddenly get laid off and you are looking for opportunities, communicate well with colleagues to make impact, and manage up to avoid getting into PIP, System Design skills.... But is there a list of Soft AND Hard skills that are core to a engineer's career in long term?

Hello,

As the title says, I’m stuck as an entry level engineer in FAANG for almost 4 years now. I’ve been reflecting on what I’m doing wrong.

My first company I worked for 1 year and didn’t not like it because the lack of mentorship. I joined and my questions never got answered, the tech lead didn’t really care about giving mentorship, just gave me links and bug IDs. I was able to survive for 1 year but I left the company because I felt so lost. My manager mentioned that I was “on track” to getting promoted but I hated the culture.

Then worked for 1.9 years on another company, where I received awards for my projects and contributions. I did receive mentorship here, but I was not able to get promoted. At the end of the timeline my manager mentioned I was moving slower and slower. I was working as a full stack and I believe my error here was not playing my strengths, since every time I had to take another project it would be on a different area, such as server on a language I never used before. I had a few discussions with my tech lead and I felt I lost my team trust because they would give a lot of comments, and just get a lot feedback from other people. This kinda demoralized me and made it hard to keep working so I changed teams. My last team I worked for 8 months before getting laid off. Here I also received recognition for my projects. My first project I missed the deadline because the onboarding had nothing to do with my project. I integrated our tool with an external team, so most of the code base I worked was not even ours (the techlead and team didn’t have much knowledge). Then I was given another project where I was starting to get traction, onboarding and project matched, I had to ramp up again on the new tech stack and my manager was getting frustrated with me, my team was very helpful and I was slowly to become independent. I feel like people trusted me here and code reviews would go smooth this time, at the end I was finally getting positive feedback, but was affected by the layoffs. From reflecting, here is what I did wrong:

• Not communicating well enough my work with my managers. Status updates I was blocked/learning and that would make me look slow.

• Not very good mentorship, I feel like at the beginning I needed lots of 1:1 to be able to learn our teams codebase. Sometimes I got very good mentorship but not complete. So I learned well parts of the code base where the tech stack applied.

• Switching projects too much, went from front end, full stack, server side with several languages. Every time I had to re learn a lot of new of the tech stack.

I did get several recognitions for my contribution with at least helps me think I’m not completely inadequate for the field.

I am looking for a new position, is there anything that could help me perform well as a mid engineer?

Thanks

I just got laid off from the startup I was working at with zero notice. I'm back on the job hunt. I've been working for about seven years now. I was a full-stack developer in my recent position. In the first five years of my career, I've worked in roles where I've had to carry out SRE work.

I'm looking at a job posting for an SRE position at a place I'd like to work.

What are the things that I should consider when before taking the call to apply for SRE roles?

I have been impacted by the recent layoffs. Let’s call it Company A. After that, I got an offer from company B. Since I’m on H1B visa, I had to sign the offer and join the company as soon as the visa transfer is completed. Let’s say a short time (less than 2 months) after joining company B, I got an offer from other companies - company C that I have interviewed in the past which offer better level, scope (project) and TC and if I decide to move to company C.

Questions:

1. How should I notify the manager at company B and explain them the situation?
2. How and when do I notify company C that I had to join company B to maintain my visa status?
3. I’m afraid that company C would think bad as I’m leaving a recently joined company B (what if the company C’s recruiter think if I will do same with them in future)
4. What if the company C does layoffs after joining them?
5. Is there a possibility to make sure anything(s) with company B to burn as less bridges as possible?
6. Communication tips are much appreciated
7. Any other inputs/questions I need to keep in mind

Thank you so much.

I recently changed teams(been over 4 weeks). The current team did not have a manager/sr. engg manager to report to, and everyone reported to an Sr. director. This sr. director reported to a VP in my org.

Unfortunately during a round of layoffs, our director got laid off. So, now imagine my team is "headless".

Our VP did mention that they will try to bring in someone interim. Say that happens, and I am able to make a good connection with this "new" but temporary manager, but after a few months, we get a "permanent" manager, my questions and/or concerns around these are

1. This would be my first time I will be in this situation mine is a tier-3 company, also not a tech-first company, is this how even Big Tech works? How do you all navigate this change, and continuous (non-technical) context switch of leadership?
2. As you might have guessed how do I best make sure that my accomplishments(refers to the brag doc*) gets clearly communicated between my old manager, me, and my new manager?
3. Does it make sense to even "talk" about getting promoted with the old manager if I have been on this team for 4 weeks?
4. Re. to point 3, some notes about my accomplishments: I already was able to find bugs in their pipelines, and communicated about this to cross functional teams too, and everyone acknowledged this, and we have been able to avoid a major failure while shipping to prod environment, thereby saving us time(in months). What I am trying to say is I have been making(in my humble opinion) impact from day 1. I also am contributing to an internal library which will be used for onboarding several teams(cross regional too) in my company. I am the second developer on this repo. I already am keeping track about all of this in my "brag doc", I have been clearly communicating about my work with my scrum master, my current Principal Engineer, and other engineers.
5. This is painful to write but, we have 3 engineers including me who are on the same level as mine(level 2), 1 Level-1, and 1 Principal Engg. Now, I am not comparing, but how do I put my best foot forward so that I too get a shot of pushing forward my promo packet along with others? There is a notion in my company(I dont know about Big Tech) that we "tend to" not have more than 2 level-3 engineers on a team, so should I just give up of not hoping to get promoted, and instead keep my head down and wait for new year or until I quit? Sorry if I sound negative, but its what it is.

Some more information about me:

YOE: 6+ this is what has been killing me from inside, 6+ yoe, and stuck on Level-2, I agree things were not hunky dory with me(been through a lot of personal s***), and couldn't focus on this side of my life.

I agree this is my mistake, but I know myself, and I know I can make it work,I can push myself and make it work, but asking for a guidance is all.

Appreciate you all for reading till the end, can't thank this community especially Rahul,and Alex.

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Is It insensitive/disrespectful to try to initiate conversations with employees at a company about your aspirations to join if there has been recent layoffs within their organization? E.g. I invite someone to a lunch and ask for advice on how to improve my prospects for a future position at this company? My aspirations to join has been quite constant during a year or so, but I don't know what's the right thing to do right now given the current circumstances.

I wanted to ask people to how to handle stress at work especially after a company layoff with fewer people around?

Is it a good idea to plan time-off around busy periods at work especially after a tech layoff when workloads may have increased for remaining employees?

Given all of the tech layoff, my company also conducted ~10% layoff earlier this month. I am not directly impacted by the layoff as a Senior SWE. But due to the layoff and reorganization, I found that I have become the official go-to person when it comes to Production system issue for the backend and point of contact when it comes to troubleshooting 3rd party API and production issue triage person.

I just finished my first on-call rotation for production support last week, and it's kind of exhausting when I reported Production Incident that categorized as P1 and P2 incident, which resulted an outage due to 3rd party API. I got a lot questions from Product and Business to get updates on business impacts from this 3rd party API outage issue for the past couple days. In light of this, I found myself really need a break from the exhaust of the work. Any thoughts or suggestions on this?

All Big Tech including Google, Meta, Amazon have done one round of layoffs. Interesting to hear what is your opinion is on the severance packages in the subsequent rounds. Does it get reduced? Asking because I am in interview process with Google. If they do a layoff will I get very less severance than the 1st round? My friends at Google are certain that there will be more rounds of layoffs in coming months.

I am currently burnt out and looking for ways to take a break.

Looking at Google's generous severance benefits, I had thoughts to inform my manager that I am up for the chopping block if there are any foresight of next round of layoffs. Which I think should be good for the company since I am also helping one motivated Googler to not be laid off in the future.

But then, I am afraid it might get rejected and my manager's relationship with me get strained.

Are there any suggestions on getting severance package while indicating my intent to resign?

Additional context

I am currently not on PIP and is considered excellent performer. I was promoted to L5 in mid 2021

Michael Lin's blog discussed on the "preemptive severance package" which is relevant to what I am hoping to do

As a Senior software engineer working at a mid-size tech company, I’m still learning how to properly push back when others Sr SWE & managers or Directors from Web or Mobile team tried to get me to do tasks that do not match my own priority.  As much as I like to be nice and support others, I agree that I can only do so much.  I brought this up with my direct manager and my Director (L7 Senior Manager & L8 Director), and they told me to loop them in when I face overwhelming pressures from other engineers/ cross-functional teams. My direct manager also told me they wants me to be able to focus on big project initiative, and they see that I am on track to be the Tech Lead given my current trending.

While I do appreciate that my boss gives me words of assurance and direction and offered to step in to fend off those pressures during my one-on-one call, I recognize that I would have to be the person who is good on establish priorities and be able to push back on people. I cannot really rely on my boss to do the push-back to fend off the pressure given that with the recent layoff, we are short on staff.

Wanted to get some thoughts and suggestions on "How can I push back diplomatically against an overwhelming amount of tasks"?

To folks who have been impacted by the ongoing layoffs, should we be transparent about our ongoing situation with regard to employment? Just wondering if that would tend to hurt one as the interview progresses towards the offer stage.

The question mentions the details. Given the uncertainty around, how to choose your next organisation?

The CEO of my company announced a company wide layoff. This layoff also impacted the engineering org. How to navigate tech company layoff? How to stop panicking and navigate tech company layoff?

Right after the layoff announcement, I (L5, Senior SWE) reached out to my manager (L7) and Director (L8) about the impact of layoff. They told me that the impact is minimal to our team since we're a core service team that operates the company's flagship infrastructure and platform system.

While that's reassuring from my manager that my team is necessary for the company product, my worry is that I already find my current workload and responsibilities is overwhelming given my current team size is short staffed and not able to hire enough engineers to fill the head counts we need prior to the tech layoff. Overall, I'm feeling anxious about the impact of the layoff and how it can lead to more stress and tech burnout.

Can I get some perspective on how to stop panicking and navigate tech company layoff (even when one is not laid off)?

My company recently laid off 15% of its workforce. I'm currently in the process of updating my resume, and plan on prepping for interviews again (doing LC) once I come back from vacation.

After my LI announcement of the recent layoffs, recruiters had started to reach out to me. I feel flattered by the response but I don't feel that I'm ready to take on interviews yet before I do some proper preparation.

Should I ignore calendly invites and wait before aggressively reaching out (to network/connect) with recruiters when I'm in a more ready position to apply?

Is there any value in starting these conversations at all at atm? Or would it be a waste of my time -- and I should instead focus my time and attention towards prepping for interviews instead?

Currently, I'm not really looking to rush the process and I feel like recruiters can be pretty pushy sometimes in wanting to fill in roles for companies.

Any thoughts?

This half I've been assigned to a new greenfield project and I'm having a tough time believing in the product idea and I think the product team is being overly optimistic.

I'm concerned the problem the product solves isn't important enough, that the solution won't be adopted and that the business value isn't clear. They're also pushing for rushed timelines even before we've decided on what will be delivered.

I'm worried if this thing doesn't get traction and we end up having layoffs that it would make our team a target.

How should I think about this situation? Try to make the best out of it? Try to get out of it?

Say a recruiter from Series C reaches out to you for a SWE role.

What all are the questions that one should ask in order to do the understand the potential of the startup so that there is less risk of layoffs when joining there, given the uncertain times.

I am aware of crunchbase website and looking at the news article that are linked there. What other homework one should during/before/after the interview process in terms of questions to ask, information to collect?

The limitation that is usually is the startups have very few employees so it is difficult to get concrete answers about the culture, WLB, actual work unless you are in their network.

Given all the layoffs happening all over tech industry.

This Amazon expert thinks so:

Please assist with your advice.

Hi,

I unfortunately missed this event last evening: .

I would really appreciate someone highlighting the biggest takeaways.

I'm especially interested in the question "Switching jobs in the poor economy: good or bad idea?" but key points from other topics would be helpful too.

Thank you so much!

I have been doing good at my current company, been here for 3+ years working initially as an Entry Level, then promoted after an year to a MidLevel Software Engineer. I have been receiving "Exceeds Expectations i.e. 4/5" rating since the beginning and "Superb i.e. 5/5" rating once.

I applied for international relocation to Singapore back in July. The manager and skip mentioned that while cost cutting is going on, they are making an exception for me and it should be processed completely by initial weeks of January 2023. In times of layoffs, and especially with my company's stocks not doing that good, I am afraid if it could lead to getting laid off. This is causing me a bit of anxiety.

Although it is being mentioned by leadership that no layoffs are happening, we are seeing projects getting cut off, rigorous re-orgs happening, and entire focus of the organisation is on cost saving, which I feel is great especially in current times.

I started the conversations for relocation when times were going good in terms of offers being posted in the market. The teams were thriving as well in terms of work. But by the time entire process got over, it seems the situations have changed. What should I do?

To add on, another thing I did sometime back was to share with my manager on how I am performing several roles of the next level and how it can be used to further the cause of promotion in the upcoming performance reviews. I tried to break down the career ladder doc into key umbrellas of behaviours needed, and assigned the initiatives I delivered under those. Now afraid if this was another way I shot myself in the foot by asking for more in times of cost-saving and probably being conservative. Please assist with your advice.

A little context: I joined my company back in Jan and have been doing really well. I’ve been consistently pushing code, owning projects, and creating good relationships with my colleagues.

This week I’ve been really sick and it feels like nothing is going right. I have been running an experiment for a couple months and today I found out that one of the arms is bugged because I introduced it a while ago. After a scrambled meeting with my lead and manager, I addressed the bug and pushed a fix but because of freezes my bug fix won’t actually be in til after year end. My manager stated that they wouldn’t have expect an engineer to not notice a bug like this go on for so long.

The business side is actually not even interested in the bugged arm and would like to go with an approach I proposed earlier in the project.

I’ve learned a lot since I pushed the bugged change and my code and communication has improved but my managers comment plus all the news about layoffs and perfs and PIPs has had my anxiety through the roof the past few weeks. Anyone else feeling the same?

I recently applied for an internal transfer. As part of the company process, I discussed it with my manager. He approved my application for that one role, which fell through due to internal changes to the role. My manager was not particularly happy about my transfer request, though he mentioned how the company is supportive of engineers seeking internal opportunities.

What do I do to mitigate any potential consequences of the failed internal transfer (e.g. getting a poor performance review, being first on the chopping block for any layoffs, etc.)? Right now, I'm thinking it would be best to keep my head down and produce the best work I can, not applying to any other internal roles.

I'm new to Meta, so I'm currently in team selection. My goal is to choose a team that maintains more critical pieces and are more stable with respect to layoffs/reorganizations vs. (slightly) more moonshotty teams with higher risk/reward. An example of the latter would be a team working on maintaining an ads pipeline while one for the former would be a team experimenting with new UI features.

How can I find a team that meets that bill, and what questions can I ask to help identify this?

I got laid off from a big-tech company a few weeks ago. Since I'm on a visa, I started studying immediately & applying. However, I still have some legroom from my company due to a decent severance. But seeing so many people being laid off from good companies makes it very stressful as the competition is getting more challenging for a role.

How do you deal with it? Do you not check the news and ignore it? Any good mindsets and strategies to adopt?

I’m currently relatively happy in my current role working on challenging problems, I like my technical peers and management and during my 3 years here I got promoted from entry level engineer to senior engineer (SD1 to SD3).

However, given the scope and impact I provide, it feels like I can potentially make ~100k more (50% increase) with a job hop talking to multiple recruiters.

The worry is that I lose the equity I built in my current role and be exposed to layoffs at the new company. Also, getting promoted to staff engineer for a similar compensation increase would probably take a while. I’m tempted to switch jobs to maximize compensation.

Feeling so bad for ex-colleagues, lost trust in leadership, don’t know when the next round of layoffs are. How do I gain motivation to start working like before?

Hi,

With tons of layoffs already happening and rumors about impending layoffs, is there something one can do to protect themselves? Logically, performing above expectations and being a critical part of the team would make sense. However, recently looking at LinkedIn and other career news, seems like no one can be sure that they’re safe. So, do you have any tips on how to approach this? Does it make sense to stay put within a team where you have great relationship with your manager and skip etc or find a new company to get ahead of this risk? Thanks!

This is somewhat of a rant as well, but please bear with me.

My current level is equivalent to that of an E4 at Meta. A Senior Level in my organisation is almost equivalent of E4 in Meta, while the next level is around E5. I have been trying to work towards a promotion since the last 2 years, working on RFCs, cross team projects, a lot of glue work, upskilling the team, writing a lot of documentation, reviewing outages and RFCs, mentoring junior engineers, delivering common libraries that can be used across the organisation, driving process improvements and writing tons of code. The last few projects were shipped without a single issue in production, despite being full blown revamps for services.

With layoffs happening in a lot of organisations (Twitter/Meta/Lyft/Stripe etc.), I am feeling a bit overwhelmed that it may happen to us as well, especially given the state of market. I am trying to keep my head low and improve myself. Brushing up the fundamentals right now. I am hoping that it would help me to improve in general as an engineer as well as in interviews, if need be.

My company required me to portray the next level behaviour for some time (close to 1-1.5 years) consistently to be considered for an up-levelling. Now with everything going around, Thinking that I may have to do the same for another 2 years in the next organisation hits me a bit. Overtime, there were some feedbacks I tried to fix - went through courses on communication and now it seems a bit unfair, even if out of control. I feel I could be overthinking but just feeling this way.

1. How should one act in such weather?
2. What is the best way to not feel overwhelmed and be sure to do what is best for one's career?
3. Also, are there any advices for the above career context?

I am a little worried about the potential of layoffs at Meta. I am not sure if I will get a needs support. I have been working on doing a design doc for the past month, and my manager has generally been very positive towards me. But I feel like I might get a NS due to my not submitting as many diffs and accepting as many diffs. I joined my team less than three months ago, and still technically ramping up. I would be sad if I got a NS or a pip, but it wouldn't destroy me.I guess my question would be how can I best buffer myself during these next few months, and how can I avoid situations like this in the future? What should I do if I do get put on PIP/NS?

Prepping for interviews always feels detrimental to actual career growth. At the same time, what are the things one should look out for to avoid getting laid off and jump ship when things are about to go south.

One advice mentioned often is to look for finances of the company, but I am not aware how to analyse it. Can you help with resources for the same?

I imagine these orgs will be safer from layoffs right? I'm interested in AI/ML fairness, but I have some reservations about pivoting there as they won't directly produce revenue for Apple.

I'm considering joining a new ads org, and I was wondering what working in ads was like overall since I've never worked in ads before.

A more specific question: There's a lot of competition in the online ads space nowadays - Will that make ads orgs more prone to layoffs as they find trouble gaining traction in this crowded market?