If you were not laid off, how are your 1:1 meetings going?

Your managers know nothing. There are 3 things you can do if you are paranoid about being laid off.

- work on something that’s central to the business

- ship software frequently, such that git blame makes it obvious

- form a relationship with your manager and their manager

Everything else is out of your control.

I wasn't recently laid off, but I quit. In retrospect, my manager handled 1:1 meetings extremely poorly. He always asked me to lay out any aspects that I could improve. I confided in him that I wish I could be more organized, but the amount of work I had made it hard to focus on improvement task rather than problem solving in the code base.

When I quit (due to stress, in a high work load phase of a project), he included my phrases verbatim in my written job reference (these are common in Germany). He literally wrote that I was unfocused and easily overworked. When I complained, he made sure to let me know that the stated issues were just what I told him in our 1:1 meetings. I can only assume malice, since they were really unhappy about me quitting and they expected the project deadline to be missed because of it.

As first line manager, I don't know shit, because when I know it my team knows it too. We are all in the same boat.

As a manager the hardest thing for me is "selling company loyalty". I understand selling vision and coolness of projects (they are somewhat tangible?). A large part of selling loyalty is values and having people's back during rough times - same thing expected from managers. With the layoffs being a clear Kowtow to wall street (and fed's desire to manage up unemployment) how do I not come across as gullible or worse as an outright liar? I can't say that in a 1/1 as then I'd just look incompetent!

Yes this is all after we are keeping our heads down and doing our jobs!

Last round of layoff my manager got fired and I kept my job. He was just as surprised by the layoffs as everybody else.

Now is the time to sell to your manager, so they can sell to their manager, why you and your team are mission critical, and are working to keep the lights on.

First level managers are usually kept in the dark just like leaf node employees. I know my manager doesn't know shit, and when he knows, it's because he'll need to tell me in a few days.

They're always meh. The middle managers have no real power or insight. I get very little out of them.

When covid started and companies all over the world were laying people off (or furloughing them), I asked my manager if there were going to be layoffs at our company. He said, "I'm not allowed to say one way or the other."

I assumed that the reason he wasn't allowed was because we were a public company and if something he said made it into the media, there would be legal implications, especially if the stock price was affected.

My current company is saying, "Nope. No layoffs. We have plenty of money. We won't have to even think about layoffs for quite a while. Go back to work." Not a public company. Big difference.

Not layoff-specific, but here are questions [1] you should be asking your manager at every 1:1 meeting:

How is your week going?

What are some of your priorities for this week?

What challenges have you been having?

How can I help you?

What feedback do you have for me?

You will get more information from the answers to these questions than if you were to directly ask your manager "Am I expendable in the next layoff?".

[1] https://workweek.com/2022/09/26/performance-reviews-dont-act...

I'm not particularly fond of regular 1:1 meetings, my manager had one each week, and I thought it bordered on micromanagement. Much preferring to bring up my concerns / problems as they arise, and be otherwise left alone as much as possible.

Front line managers (and usually second-line managers and directors) are almost always not looped in to these decisions. These are company-impacting decisions made by executives. A VP here or there might be in the know depending on the size of the company, but the vast majority of management has no idea what's going to happen.

This isn’t answering your question, but I thought worth mentioning based on the concerns in the comments.

One way to know if you might be getting laid off is when your 1:1s stop happening. Your manager might make excuses for skipping that week, then the next and the next. They also seem to have a change in personality.

Another way is if you feel the goal has changed and the new goal is ambiguous.

I’m currently drawing illustrations for a course to help employees navigate layoffs. It suggests ways to get visibility into what’s happening at the org, factors that impact lay off decisions, and how you can place yourself in a position of strength.

Basically get as much info as you can like an investor would about the company’s performance overall. Understand how your specific team impacts the bottom line. Make sure you’re performing well and it’s viewed that way. When it’s time for layoffs, your manager is looking for reasons to justify letting you go. When they have that lens on, anything can be misinterpreted.

If you feel you may be getting let go, it’s better for your mental health and your ability to get the next job, to leave on your own terms.

They won't know anything definite. If they've been at the company for a long time and have been through layoffs before ask them what their gut feeling is. Another thing to ask, which they may know, is how it will go down if layoffs happen. You could also reach out to HR and see if you get a "No, nothing like that is planned" vs a scripted response like "please refer to policy x,y,z that states HR will not discuss".

edit: years ago, i was at a company that laid off a group of about 20 people very close to me. I remember my boss having a box of kleenex on his desk where there was never any before. Lots of people left his office crying. Things like that could be an indicator too.

They were weird the first couple of weeks, but now it's back to how it was. I had spent the last ~4 months or so going through the acceptance phase of being laid off, and now that I haven't, I sort of wish I was? I could have used the time off.

Not really, the place I work in hasn't announced layoffs... YET!

So each and every new meeting that gets put in the calendar is immediately scrutinized to see what is "really" about.

Got one just now with a VP and six other folks I don't work too closely with, and we're all immediately on Slack trying to figure out why it's been called. Nerve wracking to say the least.

"you should try not to worry about what you can't control" appears to be the industry standard

I had an annual review on Friday and got my highest marks ever with the company. I've built a reputation for myself as the go-to guy for troubleshooting deep problems with the system and I'm on a first-name basis with people outside of my department because of this, so I'm not really overly concerned about layoffs because we're profitable and stable. It's also why I haven't concerned myself with moving on to another company as of late. Yeah, I could definitely make more elsewhere, but I'd go from being wanted and needed to merely being wanted.

I have impromptu 1:1s with my manager all the time, though, simply because I've got the best handle of what's going on with our platform at any particular time.

1:1 meetings? what's that?

If you're in the US and they're with a software engineer, I think you should be talking about unionizing.

[0]: https://code-cwa.org/

Director-level here. The chances of your manager knowing ahead of time about layoffs is pretty low, and having been in leadership during a few rounds of layoffs, I can confirm that middle- and lower-management often only find out about the layoffs maybe a handful of days in advance. The C-suite and HR know about it for weeks, and _maybe_ a VP might be looped in, depending on the size of the company.

Should you expect real answers? If your boss is cool, yes. You should expect them to be honest. Just don't expect them to have any useful information. If your boss is not cool, then... that's another problem entirely. :)

The best thing you can do to ensure you have a job is to provide value to the business. That means shipping things on time, that means fixing bugs, that means being proactive, that means spending time on less sexy stuff that makes money instead of shiny new things that are fun. And honestly, it's really, really difficult to do that when you think you might be facing a round of layoffs -- or have already gone through them!

What questions should you be asking your manager _now_, post-layoffs? "How can I help" is one. How can you help the company be more successful so they don't need more layoffs. Great question to ask. Your manager may not know, but it's a good question.

Personally? I'd brush up your resume, suck up to your manager, be as friendly as you can with as many people as you can, and pump yourself up as an awesome colleague, because the day will come when they will lay _you_ off, and you'll want a network that you can rely upon.

TL;DR: In this environment, build value to keep your job, but also build relationships with your colleagues (boss, peers, reports, indirect team members), and keep your eyes open for other opportunities where you can leverage those now-more-solid relationships to get references or referrals.

Hope that helps.

Depending on the company, layoffs are usually only known about ahead of time in HR and at VP+ levels. Your team manager is just as worried as you are.

Manager got fired so I don't really have 1:1s - the skip-level guy is the interim manager and doesn't have time for that.

No, because I know my manager doesn't know more than I do.

I don't expect any answer nor peace of mind because nothing in life is certain.

So I try to block out the external world and continue doing my job.

I don't have 1:1 meetings, nor do I ever get reviews of my work, but I get things done and I'm still tasked with stuff, so I must be doing something right?

I assume my manager doesn’t know anything

What information would be useful to me ? I still have my job, got to keep executing

I haven’t had a manager in three or four months so I don’t have 1-on-1s.

My anxiety is sky high, I can assure you of that.

They've become infrequent

I don't have any.