[hawkice]

My employer had two rounds of layoffs recently. People from my team were let go both times. Neither time did my team lead get consulted. No higher manager regularly interacts with me or anyone else on the team, although I now have once a month meetings with a slightly more senior engineering lead.

I asked which factors led to being let go. First round, it was underperformers, then tenure. Second was purely tenure. Now I'm the most recent eng hire on the team. My tech lead insists I'm far too valuable to lose, and wouldn't be on the list for any future layoffs. But how could his boss know? Perhaps they care. Other teams got wildly upset when similarly critical people got let go, though, and I don't recall that being undone.

I have little information about my employer, my own future, or how these decisions will be made. That information would be valuable to me. I'm curious if there are employers who would prefer to make the change of more honor for less base pay. I might accept, depends on details.

[scruple]

> My tech lead insists I'm far too valuable to lose, and wouldn't be on the list for any future layoffs

I've been told things like this in the past. Each time it triggered my Spidey-Sense. I've yet to get hit by a layoff, but 75% of the tech companies I've worked for have experienced layoffs in the '00s, '10s, and now '20s.

The last time a manager told me this I took it as a sign of incoming trouble and found a new employer. That former manager, a VP, was laid off this week. As another HN user commented in this thread, most management are also just workers. As such, they don't have really have the pull to say these things. IMO, they're trying to stop the bleeding.