The 30/5/5 layoff protection rule
- YT :: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SZDs9Brcpg
- Original title :: The Layoff-Proof Developer Skill Nobody Talks About
Working hard and getting good reviews doesn't protect you from layoffs, because layoffs are a business exercise (cost, risk, restructuring) that asks "what breaks if this person leaves?" rather than "did they work hard?" Proving you worked on something ("I worked on task X") doesn't prove the business should keep paying for the role - if leadership can't connect your work to revenue, cost, or risk, you look like a cost with a nice review attached.
The proposed 30/5/5 split of your work week: 30 hours on core delivery tied to current business priorities (OKRs, revenue, cost savings, risk reduction - not random heroics nobody can explain); 5 hours making that work visible via a weekly update with four elements (outcome, confidence level, blocker, business risk - e.g. "billing dependency on track, confidence 8/10, blocked on product approval, launch risk rises if it slips"); and 5 hours building leverage that travels with you regardless of employer - critical judgment, cross-team trust, mentoring, documentation, owning the handoffs between engineering, product, and operations. Also: use a "P1 protocol" of reporting three substantial accomplishments rather than twenty small ones, translate KPIs like ticket count or uptime into business terms (time to revenue, cost avoidance, risk reduction), and never hoard knowledge - write runbooks and train people instead of becoming "a bottleneck with a login." None of this makes you immune to layoffs, but it gives you leverage before you need it.