Does anyone feel secure in their job?

Tech I think is particularly bad for people feeling insecure. We act like it's normal and shame those who don't do this, but the idea of having to constantly revamp your skillset every ~5-10 years to remain employable is not normal. My dad has been a lorry (truck) driver for 40 years, and aside from a few changes in vehicle tech nothing has really changed much for him.

I know some people who had great tech jobs in the 90s, but those skills are now obsolete. I see people even today who I'm convinced won't be employable in a few years. For example, there was a guy at the last place I worked who just wrote HTML and basic JQuery code for one of our legacy products. He had been doing this for 10+ years, and recently it was announced that they would soon be pulling the plug on that product. I don't know what that guy is going to do – realistically no one is hiring for HTML and basic javascript today.

My opinion is that non of us in tech should feel secure. I've seen some really brutal layoffs over the course of my career where even the most value people are chopped because an order has come from above. You could be the most valuable person on your team by far, but if the company no longer deems your project needed or your skillset can be outsourced for much cheaper then non of it really matters.

I feel sorry for people who aren't geeks in this industry to be honest. I find I can upskill quite easily just because I enjoy tech so want to learn new things. But I understand that most people probably don't want to finish work to continue working on personal projects that require learning new skills.

My advice to everyone in this industry is to just enjoy it while it lasts and to build up savings. That's really the only way you can reduce stress and feel any sense of security.

Got laid off in August right before my wedding. Thankfully found a job quickly, but the lesson I've ingrained is that (at least in America) you can do your best possible job and still end up on the chopping block. It's very bothersome. I suffer from anxiety and have trouble compartmentalizing my daily struggles. I have trouble sleeping at night. The rat race is exhausting.

An old joke: Q: What's the difference between a contractor and a permie? A: The contractor KNOWS they have no job security. IMHO after working years in tech - your only real job security is your skillset. OTOH, working in public sector can be quite secure, and a good idea while kids are growing up.

I feel reasonably secure in my job, but I live in little Finland, where my salary is a third of what it would likely be in an equivalent position in the States. This changes the calculus quite a bit.

For example, I'm part of a thing called an unemployment fund, which mostly guarantees that I will recieve about 50% of my income for ten months if I happen to get fired tomorrow. My family gets by quite comfortably on about half of my take home pay, and I invest the other half, so as long as I don't give into lifestyle inflation we're essentially safe for at least that long before we have to start dipping into our savings.

At the same time, when I lived in the United States my savings rate was closer to 80%, which meant every month of working potentially paid for 5 months of maintaining my lifestyle. Within 3 months I would have already had a stronger safety net than I currently have here.

Either way, runway is the thing that really matters for a feeling of financial, and hence professional, safety. You will almost certainly land some kind of new job within 6 months if from the beginning you take the job search seriously - but you have to be able to rely on yourself to last those 6 months. You can't fall into despair about it.

Do you have 12 months or more in savings? If not, that’s why. 12 months should be enough to find another job, even when economy is bad.

I generally feel secure in my role (Director-level) with respect to things that are within the control of my boss and myself. My company is doing _okay_, and I bring a certain level of expertise that surpasses many of my peers and the folks that I'm responsible for, so that gives me a certain level of comfort in knowing that they can't really fire me. My boss has told me straight out that he can't lose me, to the point where he's advocated against his superiors firing _other_ people because I wouldn't like that, and if I don't like it, I might leave, and I can't leave because then he'd be screwed.

So in that respect, I feel fairly secure. But my boss doesn't control the purse strings and there's a chance that I could be on the chopping block if there are layoffs or if the company goes under. I don't think those concerns ever really go away, though.

I've worked for multiple failed startups and in game dev (which seems to like to lay a bunch of people off shortly after a game is released). I've been laid off from more companies than I've not, at this point.

I just kind of assume it's going to happen at some point. I even found out I narrowly avoided being laid off at my previous company at a large corporation. I was on the list for their first layoff (which was like 6 months after I joined, I was still the 3rd most recent engineering hire) but someone else in the department quit which allowed my manager to not have to include me. I then survived two other layoff rounds at that company.

And I survived a layoff round at my current company as well, although it was a fairly small layoff to begin with and I'm making them money directly as a consultant staffed on a project so they didn't have much reason to lay me off anyway.

I have career security, not job security. Finding new work is fairly straightforward, even if any specific role may go up in smoke at almost any time.

I find having a robust emergency fund reduces the anxiety. For the feelings of inadequacy, I suggest teaching and mentoring, and maybe also therapy. if you've been doing software in SV for 10 years, you're so far ahead of most people who want to get paid software, you shouldn't feel more a little bit of constant pressure to be staying up to date.

Yes I feel very secure in my job. It’s probably the only aspect of my life that feels truely secure.

I was lucky to fall into a super niche area of healthcare where there is a high demand for my services and a lack of people trained and qualified to do my job.