How to Survive Engineering Layoffs: A Technical Lead's Perspective on What Actually Matters

I've been in the room when layoff lists get made. Not as HR. As a technical lead asked to identify "non-essential" engineers.

Here's what I learned: technical skills barely matter in these decisions.

Let me explain what does.

The Spreadsheet Problem

When leadership decides to cut 20%, they don't review your code. They review a spreadsheet.

That spreadsheet contains:

Name | Salary | Team | Manager Assessment | Project Criticality

Your manager fills in "Assessment" with a one-liner. If they can't articulate your value in under 10 words, you're at risk.

❌ "Good engineer, writes clean code"
✅ "Owns payments integration, $2M revenue impact"

The second engineer survives. The first doesn't.

System Ownership as Job Security

The single most effective protection is owning a critical system.

Not "working on it." Owning it.

Ownership checklist:
[ ] You get paged when it breaks
[ ] You review all PRs to this system
[ ] You know the git history and why decisions were made
[ ] Your departure creates 3-6 months knowledge gap
[ ] Business stakeholders know your name

If you can't check most of these boxes for at least one system, you're replaceable on paper.

The Profit Center Test

Run this test on your current work:

function isProfitCenter(work) {
  const profitSignals = [
    'generates revenue',
    'reduces churn',
    'cuts costs measurably',
    'enables sales',
    'prevents outages'
  ];

  const costSignals = [
    'internal tooling',
    'nice to have',
    'tech debt cleanup',
    'refactoring',
    'infrastructure improvements'
  ];

  // If you can only describe your work with costSignals,
  // you're a cost center. Act accordingly.
}

Cost center teams get cut first. Always.

Tech debt and refactoring are important. But if that's 100% of your work, you're vulnerable.

Visibility Engineering

Your code reaches production. Who knows?

Visibility levels:
1. Your manager knows         → Minimum survival
2. Skip-level knows           → Better odds
3. Cross-functional knows     → Good position
4. Leadership has heard name  → Strong position
5. You presented to all-hands → Excellent position

Most engineers exist at level 1. They think good work speaks for itself.

It doesn't.

When a VP reviews a layoff list and sees your name, you want them to pause. "Wait, isn't that the person who presented the payments rewrite?"

That pause saves jobs.

The Documentation Trail

Leave evidence of your impact:

# ADR-047: Payment Processing Migration

## Decision
Migrated from Stripe legacy API to Payment Intents.

## Context
Legacy API deprecated Q3 2026. 47% of revenue flows through this system.

## Consequences
- Reduced failed transactions by 12%
- Added $340K annual revenue from recovered payments
- System handles 3x previous throughput

## Author
Your Name - January 2026

ADRs, post-mortems, and technical specs with your name and business impact attached. These become artifacts that justify your existence during reviews.

The AI Question

Sam Altman said last week: "$1,000 now builds what teams did in a year."

Meta reports 30-80% productivity gains from AI coding tools.

What this means for layoffs:

Developers being cut:
- Primary value was code output volume
- Described as "writes a lot of code"
- Fungible with other devs or AI

Developers being kept:
- Primary value is judgment and architecture
- Described as "knows why we built X this way"
- Own systems, relationships, context that AI lacks

The engineers who survive are not better coders. They're better at everything around the code.

Practical Actions This Week

Monday: Identify the most critical system you could reasonably own. Volunteer for on-call.

Tuesday: Write down your top 3 achievements. Reframe each in business impact terms.

Wednesday: Request a skip-level 1:1. Prepare three questions about team direction.

Thursday: Find one opportunity to present your work beyond your immediate team.

Friday: Review your last 5 PRs. Could someone understand your business reasoning from the descriptions?

The Hard Truth

Technical excellence is necessary but not sufficient.

I've seen average engineers survive layoffs because they:

• Owned something critical
• Had visibility beyond their team
• Could articulate impact in business terms
• Built relationships at multiple levels

I've seen excellent engineers get cut because they:

• Worked on low-visibility projects
• Couldn't explain impact beyond technical metrics
• Were known only to their immediate team
• Assumed good work would speak for itself

The game isn't fair. But knowing the rules helps you play it.

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More on surviving the current tech market: jsgurujobs.com