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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

How is that a dirty secret?

Helping build the team, sharing your knowledge and expertise, it's all part of your work. Odd attitude.

If you purely want technical tasks, go freelance. Of course then you need to spend time getting business so...

Maybe still not a secret, but the dirty part in some companies is that if there are layoffs, they'll lay off the people who are paid the highest and keep the people that they trained.

When companies are laying off their top performers to save money either (a) they are falling apart, likely near death, and you should leave anyway or (b) they are just a stupid shitty company that doesn't understand the value of top developers so you should leave anyway.

So if you get laid off, it is probably a favor.

Not much of a favor if you don't see it coming and still have bills to pay.

But a true "top performer" would have another job in a week (especially in a tech hub), no?

They don't all live in tech hubs, there are many very good reasons not to jump into one of the first offers you get, and just because you're a top performer at Widget Co doesn't mean that every other company you apply to will find that self-evident based on a few interviews.

Still though, treating all junior developers as competition and your potential replacements, and thus refusing to help them, is shooting yourself in the foot. On the rare chance that you do get laid off, you can always find a new job, but what's much more likely is that a pattern of good mentorship will help you to advance in your career.

Plus those juniors might end up being part of your network next time around!

And having good peer reviews is helpful for performance reviews and promotion anyway. If everyone you've ever worked with hates you because you go out of your way to not ever be helpful to anyone, your career trajectory is going to be terrible. Working well with others, which includes enabling other members of the team to be maximally productive, is hugely important.

That has never happened in my experience, and I've been through a lot of layoffs. It's usually the exact opposite. They lay off all the peons and keep the few high level experts. They're a lot harder to replace.

Same here. Order seems to be:

1) Bad contractors, 2) Bad employees, 3) Good contractors, 4) Good employees with Mgt going along the way from bottom to top. Pay doesn't usually seem to be the deciding influence except within the groups.

One of the places I've seen do it the best first moved the few good people off of the worst teams and then just got rid of entire teams at a time.

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