Layoffs at record profits: three ways to lower your risk
A few days ago Microsoft announced it was cutting 9,000 employees. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s shares set another all-time high. And this isn’t a one-off: layoffs keep coming in waves across the whole industry. Even large, profitable companies no longer hold on to people “just in case” or to develop long-term projects.
If you want to keep your job over the next couple of years, you need to stop thinking in terms of stability and the familiar. Focus on three things that seriously increase your chances of not ending up on the next layoff list. Note: they don’t guarantee it, they increase your chances.
1. Continuous learning and adapting your skills
If in recent years you’ve simply been “doing your work tasks” without learning new technologies and approaches, that’s a warning sign. Today it’s not enough to be a good specialist within your current stack. Companies need people who keep moving forward, master new tools and quickly adjust to what the times demand.
Even if your organisation doesn’t require it directly, it’s a question of survival. The technology world today is like a game whose rules keep changing. And if at some point you decide to stop learning, that’s almost the same as leaving the game voluntarily.
So try to pick one new topic or tool every month and take it to the level of practical use. Read up on the theory yourself, go to a training to save time, arm yourself with AI tools and move on to practice.
2. Active use of AI in your work
It sounds banal, but far too many people still simply don’t use AI in their daily work. Or they use it quietly, without traces and without any visible effect in the organisation.
Metrics like “how many tasks are solved with AI” have already started to appear. So make sure you record your approaches, share them within the team, and show exactly how you save resources or improve quality. This is becoming a new form of “visible productivity”.
3. Proactivity in initiatives and transformations
The days when you could “sit it out in a corner” and just do your part of the work are over. Today the most valuable employees are those who can propose and carry out initiatives. Especially in transformational areas: AI adoption, process optimisation, experiments with new ways of working and organising teams.
Organisations keep first of all the people who influenced the transformation and actively took part in it, rather than just waiting for the outcome. These people are the engine and the backbone of the organisation. Nobody likes passive employees who have to be pushed into a “bright future”.
Initiatives don’t have to be global or large-scale. For example, you can automate part of the routine work, start using a new AI agent, or introduce or improve an engineering practice. What matters is that it’s visible you care about the product, the team and the organisation.
How do you reduce your risk of being laid off?