Ask HN: Tenured folks got fired, how can one setup career to be safe? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tenured folks got fired, how can one setup career to be safe?

10 pointsmattfrommars23 comments

Folks in my company with over 15 years who have immense knowledge and business down knowledge got kicked out. I can't fathom to see this to happen in the medical field or legal field where experience matters a lot.

I look back as I'm early 30s, what should I do now to avoid being in a thorny position or have fear of being let go.

Only thing that comes in mind is to be always be preparing and casually be looking for jobs? What if the current job does not offer marketable skills at all that makes switching to another person much more difficult.

I'm just a bit worried because having mortgage to pay, family to feed, if someone with 15 YOE at one company can be let go, what can one do to avoid being in that position?

Is it just spend free time trying to network on LinkedIn and casually apply for jobs every weekend?

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Think of yourself and your services as a one-person company. You need to always be marketing and doing sales. You never know when that one big client (your employer) might have layoffs (or you have a bad boss, or get stuck on crappy work, or whatever).

I don't put all my professional energy into my employer but hold some back for myself. I keep a constant public presence, write a lot, go to conferences, work on my own projects.

I think constantly about my positioning in the market. What's in demand? What problems need to be solved? Where are people stuck? What should I specialize in?

I take a lot of chats with folks who want general help, or just compare notes on what we're working on, or even straight up interviews.

It's constant work, but you can't trust the wiles of just one employer. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket as an investor. Be more diversified. Lately, they tech companies haven't proved loyal _at all_. They are always considering their options, so you should too.

Just accept that you can be laid off and manage your life and finances accordingly.

I know people who got laid off recently, with like 6 months severance. They're planning vacations, getting around to the projects around the house they've been putting off and maybe casually posting on Linkedin to see if anyone in their network has good opportunities. Even after their severance runs out, years of tech salary should make it trivial to build up a decent cushion of savings.

Getting laid off is only a big deal if you've mismanaged your finances. 15 years of FAANG is enough to retire. 15 years of regular tech is enough to save years of living expenses.

Unfortunately for many people, high salaries lead to ever bigger expenses. The hedonic treadmill is very addictive. The levels of savings you suggest might be rare.

I think the commenter was suggesting not to do that...

They are going to be really shocked in 6 months when they start looking for a job.

why is that? Companies are hiring for seniors, the jobs are just more competitive and some of the comp is less.

When you're single, you can always fantasize of living in a van eating noodles if you need your X amount of dollars to last N years. When you have a family (or I guess, a social circle...) its different..

I only have savings for 1 year if we keep our current spending levels. Selling 2 old cars would give another few months. Selling the apartment and moving to a smaller one, would give me around one year and a half... etc. So these things go fast...

One thing that has helped me relax is that my partner has a career that is very different than mine and we are a dual-income household. We have, for the most part, lived a life that can be supported on just one of our incomes. Our mortgage gets paid and we all eat on one of our household salaries. We are mostly frugal but not miserly. We have savings and investments that would help cushion income loss.

Academic credentials have been helpful to me - I have a MS in CS. Your profile indicates you are mechanical engineer by training. It may be worth considering if a part-time or online MS in CS is worthwhile. Especially consider this if your company offers an educational support benefit - a MS or MBA on the company's dime is attractive. I have a vague feeling the extra credentials matter much less for FAANG or software companies than working in healthcare or finance as a software engineer.

Meaningful efforts are worthwhile, even if it has to be personal projects, where you can say "I actually did this and the effect was <insert something cool>." My current organization always gets a large number of "aspirational" engineer applicants when we have openings. These types of folks can be summarized as having lite IT backgrounds. Maybe they have a little training in programming but are now mostly spreadsheet jockeys or have been doing desktop support. Or they are career-switchers who did a short javascript bootcamp and have held a number of entry-level jobs but don't seem to have actually programmed much. Don't be one of these, no matter what it takes.

1) You should consider yourself lucky that you (hopefully) learned the lesson that there's no such thing as a "safe career" before you got too old and were put in a shitty position where you were laid off in maybe your 50s-60s. It's harder to start over in another company as an older person in tech.

2) Organize your life accordingly knowing that you can be let go anytime. Save your cash to have a very solid emergency fund. Always keep your resume up to date. Always keep your eye open for different jobs. Have multiple income streams so you can survive losing your main job. Don't try and live above your means.

3) Go out for a ride and never go back. I kid, but if anyone is wondering why fewer people want to have children these days, maybe they should consider that precocity might drive people to work harder, but it does not yield a comfortable environment for raising kids.

Are you looking for a magic pill? There is nothing constant except change.

It's not about experience at all - it's about supply and demand. If there were not many decent doctors needed, they would be on the street in the same way.

In my experience, technical skills are the least valued by managements. They have the idea that techies are a fungible resource and will optimize by letting go of the experienced folk who are costing too much and hiring eager young 'uns to save on payroll.

Take a good look at your company, since you have been there have the ranks of managers increased? Have they ever laid off anybody who contributed to revenue or was adept at playing politics? Your keen observations will tell you everything that you need to know.

It's not unusual for people who have been in the same job for 15+ years to be pretty complacent.

I work at a FAANG, and the two groups that you see often slack are the new folks who don't have a hard work ethic, or people who have been at the company a long time, and stopped trying to do anything but the minimum.

When the layoffs hit, the most likely folks were those two extremes. Mid level people were safer.

People who were there for long tenure and still were going strong seemed fairly safe too. Up and coming stars were mostly safe.

As for being able to sleep well at night, the best you can do is life a lifestyle you can support with a very mediocre job for your location.

That means if you get a high paying job, don't inflate your monthly expenses. Pay off debt, invest wisely.

A few pieces of advice:

* It's better to work 10 different jobs over the years, than do a single job for 10 years.

* Know how much you are worth and job hop when you are underpaid.

* Be aware of how the work you do creates value for the business. Chasing the latest tech fads is not adding value. Working on edge-case features that no one cares about is not adding value. Saving the company $$$ by making things more efficient absolutely adds value and job security.

* Always add value. If a role does not "feel right", like it's too easy and you know you are not contributing much then run.

* Seek mentors.

* Accept that change is the only constant and you could lose your job, but if you managed your career well finding a new job should not be bad.

* Manage your finances so you can weather a bad industry downturn.

Assuming you're in the US, no job here is completely secure. Yes, it's stressful, especially when you have a mortgage and kids!

The most secure and indeed "best" jobs over the past few decades have been certain government/union jobs, like cops and firefighters - in some parts of the country.

You're more likely to do well in the long run if you're in a field you enjoy and that you're good at. Even then, it will be bumpy.

> I can't fathom to see this to happen in the medical field or legal field where experience matters a lot.

I think you need to broaden your network and talk to a lot more people in real life - not on the internet. Every field has its pluses and minuses. E.g. being a lawyer is brutal - definitely not a safe and attractive career - I can't imagine where you got that idea.

Entrepreneurship may seem riskier than a full-time job, but in some ways the full-time job is riskier: "One is the most dangerous number."

- The full-time job has exactly one source of income.

- Smart entrepreneurs build multiple sources of income: multiple customers, multiple platforms, etc...

One way to implement this could be to freelance and have multiple clients.

Another good piece of advice is to make sure your role is in a profit center, not a cost center. The profit center will be last to be laid off: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

Your ultimate career goal should be one or more of the following:

* Become financially independent

* Become a sought after technical expert

* Become a boss where you have a fewest layers of bosses above you.

Rest are expendable.

Don’t be overly optimistic. These things happen. The best you can do is accept the reality and prepare accordingly. Have credentials and be well skilled and up to date in your area of expertise.

> what can one do to avoid being in that position?

Be wary of being the highest paid person on a team. When it comes time to save money, they don't look at skill, they look at cost. Being decent at your job in the middle of the pack in terms of compensation is how to be safe.

Safe can be boring. You can make more money not being safe. It would be great to live in a society where work can be interesting, pay well, and safe, but this one of those "Choose two" scenarios.

Build a network of mentors, friends and sponsors in senior management.

You can't make your career safe without having really negative side-effects (like very low wages, when working for the government, and potentially being too out of place in the wider job market).

Even if you decide to work for the government, it isn't true you can't get fired. Plus, depending on the government, you could end up without inflation increases, be sent to a terrible project etc.

Career is worked upon one step at a time, being human has no safety mechanisms, you deal with problems are they come.

One thing that you can do, outside of your career, is to take good care of your personal finances, for that I'd need an entire year of explanations and decisions, start looking into it. Don't go after hype stocks or anything, learn how to build a very stable capital base that can weather bad times.

No company or person will do that for you.

It’s a real tragedy how bad this field is for mental health.

I think you can say that for a lot of other fields. There’s nothing special about software engineers in regards to mental health issues. Doctors, lawyers, investment bankers all have their issues too

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