My mate today asked me how they can overcome the fear of being downsized. It was pretty easy for me to counsel them because its downsizing that anyone who works in IT faces every budget time. Its a monster that we know is there, but which we hope we can roll a 5-6 and run away from each time.
So I asked them, what are what do they want, advice on overcoming the fear or ways to avoid downsizing and they of course wanted both. And since I always want blog topics, I figured this would be a great opportunity to share my thoughts on the matter.
To avoid getting downsized, its less about how good you are and more about how much people think you are vital to the firm. When it comes down it, most of us are average to good at our job, but some people always survive and flourish whilst others flounder and sink.
It's all about profile building and getting involved. Be known as the person to go to for help whenever ADVICE is needed. If you become known as the guy to go to when something needs fixing, you'll just be buried under more work then you can really deal with.
Also whilst many ISO/CMM processes rely on projects being survivable with the loss of a member, this isn't really in your interests. Hoarding information is bad and will bite you one way or another, but if you can prove yourself more accessible and valuable then a bunch of documents, do so.
Suggest new ideas for improving productivity, processes and what not, and take ownership of those. All people need to know is you're independently looking at a problem of your own accord, and they'll be impressed. Doesn't matter if you're actually doing anything!**
So they go, I should really start fixing my CV up again. Attitude wise, I reckon the attitude of I'm going to get fired so I should get ready for it is often self fulfilling. If you like, prepare, but drop the attitude.
Ideally you should be like, this year, I'm going to find ways of being more useful
And really as far as kicking the fear goes, think of it as a win win scenario...
If you survive the downsizing, you're competing with less people. Also typically in order to stop the massive morale hit that is downsizing, companies award more money for remaining employees. If I remember correctly, they year after we sacked several thousand people had the biggest pay rises and bonuses.
Downsizing also results in more work amongst fewer people, so you get more responsibility and more interesting work.
And if you get 'unlucky' and get downsized, its fairly awesome too. You get paid out (typically) redundancy pay, you get paid out any remaining vacation leave, you get a good reference (extra good reference cos its a 'Sorry for kicking you out' reference) and now you are free to move onto any firm you like.
The money really is quite good. Each time my dad got retrenched, he paid off an entire car from the redundancy payment. Each company and each person is different, but typically you get 3-4 months worth of money to live on till your next job.
So as you can see, its not really that scary***. Live on and be happy.
** In some organizations like mine however, running an idea and not doing anything will get you cruxified however, so beware.
*** unless you're looking after a family and have specialist obsolete skills which will make you impossible to rehire.
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