Hello Friends! Sharing some thoughts on how I kept my job as long as I did and how it may help you in your current situation 🙏🏽 ordisi.us/posts/2026_4_layoffs

On the point on “keeping receipts” I have always been impressed by engineers who keep a dev log.

Basically a self standup lol and I'm terrible at remembering what I did yesterday, especially when juggling multiple things

Also agree on the point on “over communicating”; it saves everyone grief and builds trust. It saves you from working 12 hours on something that was only maybe expected to take an hour (maybe it was misdescribed, maybe it wasn't important, maybe there was another way), and it builds trust because your manager knows you will communicate if their are problems and give you a longer and longer leash.

I haven't used Claude or AI in this way, but I'll have to give it a shot

That's cool

As for the dev journal, I promise myself to start one every time I am interviewing for new job (like now). All those "tell me about the most complex incident you ever solved and how did you approach it" questions would be so much easier if I had a log that I would extract this stuff from in preparation for an interview

As you kind of eluded to, the layoff decision comes down to perceived value. I didn't touch AI or “token maxing” because it's divisive due to its association with layoffs

Those are great tips. Unfortunately, last year, many of my ex-colleagues got laid off regardless. Last year we all got laid off on a company all hands meeting 😁. Logs, communication, etc..., none of it mattered unfortunately. (I no longer work as an employee anymore following that). They thanked us for our great efforts, fired us and stock prices went up! That was the moment I realized my potential going solo.

Sorry to hear about you getting laid off, I hope you were able to take time for yourself to relax and reset

Sounds like the silverlining. I can't say how many times my life, what could have been considered a negative event, turned out to be the best thing to happen to me. Congrats on reaching your of going solo.

Thank you. Agreed, I also share similar belief that negative events actually protect us sometimes from greater evil. To be honest, I wasn't much shocked by the layoffs since i saw it coming in 2023. I was luckily mentally prepared since self employment can be tough at the beginning; this is especially true when you're trying to figure out what value you could offer and to whom. I listened to stories from several people who started like me and they give me hope since there are success stories. According to research, the majority of self employed people flop due to fatigue. This is when you realize that "Salary" was your greatest enemy 😁. If my company grows one day and begin hiring people, I'll probably begin facing tough dilemmas, but I want to create a different model and reshape how organizations operate in that regards.

I'm late to the discussion. This is a good article. Lawyers and other professionals who bill by the hour keep track of exactly what they do. Software teams tend not to have precise project accounting. It usually comes down to counting people assigned to a major project or guessing "percent time" post-facto. If you see spreadsheets instead of an accounting system, it's BS. [Given my interest in cloud cost, I find this maddening. We can quantify savings from ditching managed services, but not labor cost increases from complexity — or vice versa, higher managed service prices but not lower labor costs.] As software engineers, we must track our day-to-day accomplishments on our own. The inherent conflict between the tips is striking. It's impossible to prioritize short-term business goals while taking time to truly help colleagues. Fostering team cohesion pays off only in the long term. Similarly, it's impossible to do everything an employer wants without sacrificing personal health. Layoffs have less to do with value than we believe. Whereas it's hard for companies to match software labor cost to revenue generated or expense avoided, cost by itself is easy to see. The most expensive teams and individuals are targets, regardless of how much they produce. Unless they achieve a high profile outside the company, or inside but across many teams, people are vulnerable.

Very interesting take. Indeed, encountered in the past the spreadsheet situation, and to me it seemed weird that some expect us to write what did we do during that day. About targeting most expensive employees, I'd like to show a different angle. The mass layoffs didn't only target the most expensive employees; they also targeted the average Joe because of their perceived low value or low contribution. Sometimes, it has more to do with socioeconomic status of the individual since that also plays part when it comes to impressions. Why is the expensive employee still better off getting laid off than the average Joe? If average Joe gets laid off even later, they get paid less, they barely afford groceries and save little to no money. If they get laid off, they will lose their house, their wife, their kids, their cars and end up on the streets. The expensive employee, has stocks, savings, etc... more space to plan their finances; so they could plan for contingencies more effectively. Would you rather be laid off as the overpaid VP or the average Joe in this case? I don't see loyalty anymore anywhere unfortunately so each job looks like a temporary relationship that ends up whenever either the employer or employee finds a better partner. Both me and average Joe are going to sacrifice our health; I'd rather cry on my expensive desk and expensive car than cry on junk food restaurant 😂

I agree that most people don't have the means and support when laid off and the government should be doing more to support people with financial and medical benefits. The unfortunate truth is that the system is designed to keep you motivated to be employed/employable to receive medical benefits and pay so that that you can afford some type of housing

To me, its mind boggling that one of the richest countries in the world people don't have basic health insurance without selling a kidney.