Min-Max Employment
This week, Meta laid off another 8,000 employees. These layoffs feel so dystopian nowadays especially since Meta employees ended up learning the exact day the massive cuts would happen. Imagine having to do your job the last few weeks knowing that thousands of people were going to be laid off by the end of the month.
When Google executed massive layoffs, dozens of engineers found out they no longer had a job simply because they couldn’t badge into the building after commuting to the office. Multiple people on my neighboring teams were cut, only to be casually rehired a few months later.
The reality is that these large tech companies operate with a margin of error. They assume that the handful of critical people they mistakenly let go pales in comparison to the immediate cost savings of removing a large percentage of the workforce. A business will always do what is best for its bottom line, and the sooner you accept that you are a nine-digit employee ID number on a spreadsheet, the more control you regain over your life.
If a company is structurally incapable of being loyal to you, that realization should feel incredibly freeing. It means you owe them nothing in return beyond the baseline transactional exchange of labor for capital.
Here are the three core principles for how to navigate modern employment.
1. Loyalty Doesn’t Exist
Companies routinely expect employees to pour their blood, sweat, and tears into their work, yet they refuse to invest in basic employee retention (even when they are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars). Understanding this means you must permanently kill the concept of corporate guilt.
Never feel bad about finding a better opportunity, and never sacrifice your personal life for a company that can and will cut you at any moment. Your career growth and your personal runway are your own responsibility; don’t expect a company to save you.
Don't feel bad about quitting.
Don't feel bad about taking vacation.
Don't feel bad about signing off early.
2. Build Your Own Anchor
When you rely entirely on a single company for your financial security, your identity, and your sense of worth, you are in a highly fragile position. The moment a corporate spreadsheet decides your department is too expensive, your entire world can be upended. The lesson here is that you need to start building your own anchor outside of your 9-to-5.
Whether that means aggressively upskilling, building a professional network that belongs to you rather than your employer, or starting a side project, you must create a foundation that a corporate layoff cannot touch.
3. Min-Max Employment
Employees should min-max employment the same way companies min-max employees. Treat the relationship as a purely transactional contract. Maximize your input specifically for your own skill acquisition and financial gain, and ruthlessly protect your boundaries.
Don’t feel bad about taking every single day of your vacation, and don’t feel bad about signing off early when your output for the day is delivered. Extract the maximum value from the corporation while giving them exactly what they pay for because they have no problem doing the exact same.
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