How to Make Yourself More Layoff-Proof as a Data Scientist
What tech layoffs taught me in 2023
What tech layoffs taught me in 2023
Just when we thought that life is going back to normal after the pandemic outbreak, a wave of tech layoff caught all of us tech workers by surprise. In 2023, more than 240K tech workers were laid off across more than 1,000 companies; the most recent layoff at Google and Discord indicates that it’s continuing in 2024. Both my current company and my pervious company had more than one round of layoff during the last year, with some of my friends impacted.
Even though this is the not the first time layoffs happened in the industry, the cuts were deeper than in the past. Past layoffs had often focused on functions such as Sales and Recruiting that were immediately affected by slowdowns in the business and hiring. This time, however, the impact was across the board including technical functions like software engineers and data scientists.
It’s human nature wanting to distill patterns and learnings from things, especially as a data scientist (after all, that’s one of the key aspects of your job). So like a good data scientist, I sat down at the beginning of the year to conduct a “post mortem”.
While it’s hard to predict beforehand which team/who will be impacted by a layoff (unless you are one of the decision makers), I think as a data scientist, there are things you can do to make yourself more “layoff-proof”. And I will share a few here:
Stay up to date about the company and org’s strategic direction
Why? When it comes to layoffs, the decision about which teams/individuals to let go is usually highly dependent on the company’s strategy and prioritization at the moment. For example, if a company for several quarters has been trying to make dashboard building and metric reporting more self-serviceable, when a round of layoff comes, any team that focuses on dashboard making and metric reporting will be considered.
Remember, things don’t happen overnight; there are signs that you can take as a heads up. Priority shifts usually can’t be implemented overnight or even in one quarter. In the example above, before letting go of the whole team of DS who are building dashboards/reporting metrics, the company needs to make sure the self-serviceable vision it has in mind is actually happening. So usually it will take a couple of months or quarters to build tools and set up workshops to democratize the work.
Hence it’s important to NOT just keep your head down and focus on things in your scope, but to understand what direction the company is heading in terms of its strategy and prioritization to deduce whether your work is, and will remain, important for the company. If the answer is no, you should really think long and hard about why you are still working on it and what you should be working on instead and have a discussion with your manager about it.
How? There are countless ways to stay close to strategic decisions and priorities. If you have a good manager, they should be sharing organizational context with you and the team; if they don’t do this, ask them proactively to share relevant strategic context. In situations where your manager is not capable of doing so (which is more common than you think), there are other options available; for example, All Hands meetings at all levels (company wide or org wide) are one of the best ways to get this information so you should definition try to attend those. Other ways (depending on your company’s culture) include asking in relevant Slack channels (e.g. leadership Q&A), talking to other managers in the org or your skip-level manager (use those skip-level 1v1s wisely instead of just treating them as a coffee chat!).
Make sure your scope is not too narrow and you work with different teams
Why? Continuing with the example above, if you are on the team that ONLY works on dashboard building and metric reporting, when those are democratized, your team’s value is hard to justify. But if the scope of the team is broader, it can adjust and shift its focus to one of the remaining areas it covers. At the very least, it will give the decision makers pause before completely cutting the team.
How? If you are in a position to influence the team’s scope and roadmap, make sure the team is not ONLY focusing on one thing, especially not on things that are easy to democratize or automate. Note that I’m not saying you should spread the team or yourself thin to work on EVERYTHING; focus is still important. But unless you only have one or two people on the team, the team should be able to take on a slightly broader scope and get more opportunities to pivot in dire situations. If you are not able to influence the team’s scope and it is already very narrow, you can branch out and establish relationships with other teams to get opportunities, either officially or unofficially, to work on things that might be slightly outside of your team’s immediate scope.
Consider staying close to the core business
Why? When it comes to a business, there is usually the core business (think about what a company is known for, e.g. Search for Google, Rides and Eats for Uber) and then there are the shiny new things or bets. Take Uber as an example; it started with Uber Rides then expanded into Uber Eats, which is a fairly direct extension of the core business and closely intertwined (e.g. shared supply as many Uber drivers are active on both platforms). Both businesses achieved relevant market share and became core revenue and profit drivers for the company
Uber also launched a number of new business lines that were much more experimental such as self-driving, freight, Uber Works (a staffing marketplace) and Uber Copter (helicopter rides). When those initiatives were announced, I have no doubt they were painted as top priorities and important bets for the company. However, compared to Uber Eats, which quickly became a core pillar, 1) none of these new bets contributed meaningfully to the top or bottom line within the first few years of their existence, and 2) they were much less intertwined with the core business and those easier to spin off or wind down. At the end of the day, businesses have stakeholders to answer to (e.g. Wall Street in the case of public companies), and when times get tough, non-core activities are the first ones to be scaled back; so it’s not surprising that over time, Uber ultimately shut down or scaled back most of these bets, while Rides and Eats jobs were less affected besides a temporary COVID cut-back.
How? This one is a personal choice; of course it’s exciting to work on new initiatives and the sexy new things, and these can sometimes offer career-defining growth opportunities, but if you want to increase your job security, it can be beneficial to stay close to the cash cow of your company.
Make sure you advertise for your own work
Why? In most layoff situations, the decision and information is kept confidential and only a few key individuals are in the loop. So maybe your manager is blindsided, maybe your skip-level manager as well. But most likely SOMEONE in the command chain IS helping with the decision making. Imagine you are that someone and you look at a team in your org and find yourself asking, “hmm.. what does this person do again exactly?”; I bet you will put them on the top of the cut list.
How? I know this doesn’t come naturally to most people, especially people in more technical roles. But I would really suggest that you take any opportunity you get to showcase your work to leadership. Every organization provides different opportunities of doing so — special topics during All Hands, deep dive on certain topics etc. Seize those opportunities when you can to make people remember your work and how your work is contributing to the company’s top priorities.
But remember, while everything I mentioned above aims to reduce the chance of you getting impacted by a layoff, NOTHING can guarantee that you won’t be impacted. Even if you prepare as much as possible in advance and tried everything to de-risk yourself, life happens and you might find yourself out of a job. So I have one last piece of advice I would like to give:
Never turn down an opportunity
Why? You may think you love your job, you love the company and there’s no chance you will look for a new job. But sometimes it’s not 100% within your control; when a layoff hits out of the blue, you might look back and wish you had entertained the recruiter outreach a while back.
Plus, even though you don’t want to always go through the whole painful recruiting process, it never hurts to at least take the intro calls to understand what opportunities are out there and how much your current skillset is valued in the market.
How? Pretty simple, when recruiters reach out on LinkedIn and the opportunity looks interesting, just reply to them, take an intro call and see what they say. It also doesn’t hurt to keep in touch with folks in your network so you hear about new opportunities as they become available.
I hope these lessons I learned from the last few years of layoffs can help you in some way. If you are interested in learning more about data science related topics, check out some of my other articles.
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