Read the signals and your own exposure

How companies decide who goes, the signs that often come first, and how to score your own risk honestly.

Also called layoff selection, how layoffs are decided

What: Most layoffs go from a cost target, to products, teams and locations, and only then to individual people, using reviews, cost and skills.
Why: It explains why whole teams go regardless of individual quality, and why where you sit matters as much as how well you work.

Watch out

Assuming a layoff is purely a judgement of each person's performance.

What: Signals that often come before cuts: missed results, a failed funding round, new leaders brought in to simplify, reorganisations, cancelled projects and talk of efficiency.
Why: One sign means little, several together are a reason to strengthen your position and prepare quietly.

Also called backfill freeze, no backfills, backfill

What: A stop on hiring, often including backfills, which means people who leave are not replaced.
Why: It is one of the most common early signs that a company is trying to cut costs, and it means remaining teams carry more work.

Also called quiet layoff, RTO as a layoff, return to office mandate

What: Pushing people to leave without a formal layoff, for example through strict return-to-office rules, forced relocation or harsher reviews.
Why: Leaving voluntarily usually means no severance. In a 2024 BambooHR survey a quarter of executives admitted hoping office mandates would make people quit.

Watch out

Resigning in frustration and giving up severance you would otherwise have received.

What: Quieter signs closer to you: a project losing its sponsor, a vague roadmap, work moved elsewhere, being left out of planning, or sudden requests for handover notes.
Why: They are the earliest signs you can see directly. Together they justify acting on your preparation, not panicking.

What: An honest score of your role on four things: how close your work is to revenue, how much of your week AI can do, how replaceable you are, and whether your impact is written down.
Why: It turns vague worry into a short list of what to work on first.

Watch out

Scoring yourself on effort and loyalty, which do not appear on a layoff spreadsheet.

Also called profit centre, cost center, profit center

What: A profit centre earns money, such as a product customers pay for. A cost centre spends money to support the business, such as internal tools or some IT.
Why: In a squeeze, cost centres are easier to cut or move to a cheaper location.

Also called GCC, captive centre, offshore centre

What: A company's own office in another country, often India, that does engineering, operations or support for the global business.
Why: Work moving to GCCs can create jobs in South Asia and remove them elsewhere, so location is part of your exposure.

Also called on the bench, bench time

What: At services companies, the time an employee spends between client projects, still paid but not billed to a client.
Why: Long bench time is a common route to being cut at IT services firms, especially when skills do not match new projects.

Watch out

Waiting passively on the bench instead of building skills the next projects ask for.

What: Unconfirmed talk of cuts, in anonymous forums, group chats or the office.
Why: They are a useful prompt to check your preparation, never a reason to resign or stop doing good work.

Go deeper