The organizationally invisible IC

Still Here What the all-hands isn't telling you Still Here exists because its publisher has been through it — a layoff, a near-miss, or watching colleagues disappear — and because most of what gets written about layoffs is either too late, too soft, or too dishonest about how decisions actually get made. The goal isn't scale, thought leadership, or audience-building. Success looks like one thing: becoming the publication someone forwards to a friend who just said "I think I'm next." That word-of-mouth standard — useful enough in a moment of genuine crisis to be worth sharing — is the metric every editorial decision gets measured against. The editorial approach treats layoff survival as a discipline of pattern recognition and organizational literacy, not personal motivation or career branding. Content is built around how large tech companies actually make restructuring decisions — the processes, the stakeholders, the logic — and translates that into concrete defensive positioning for individual contributors who've never had visibility into those rooms. The distinction is specificity: not "network more" but which relationship matters and why; not "be visible" but what your skip-level actually needs to see and how to frame it. The covenant with readers is straightforward: every piece must hold up when someone is actually scared. Nothing gets published that wouldn't help a person who just realized they might be on a list. No filler, no hedging, no content that exists to fill a slot. If it wouldn't change what the reader does or decides in a moment of real stakes, it doesn't belong here. To give tech workers the organizational intelligence they need to spot restructuring early and position themselves to survive it Pure survival — how layoff decisions actually get made inside large tech companies, how to read the signals, how to stay off the list, and how to land safely when prevention fails. The lens is organizational mechanics, not career development. - Long-term career growth, advancement strategy, or promotion-track optimization - Personal branding, thought leadership building, or LinkedIn strategy - General career advice unanchored to restructuring or layoff dynamics - Industry news coverage or tech company commentary outside of what illuminates organizational decision-making patterns - Self-help, mindset work, or motivational content The organizationally invisible IC A software engineer or technical individual contributor at a large tech company — FAANG, post-IPO startup, or enterprise software firm. Five to twelve years in, competent, heads-down on the work. They spend most of their time in technical output and know their immediate teammates well, but have almost no visibility into how decisions get made above their manager. They've optimized for the wrong things — performance ratings, shipping features, technical depth — without realizing the people who build the layoff list are one or two levels above anyone who's ever read their code. The industry cuts since 2022 shook their assumption that skills are protection, but they don't fully understand what changed. They read this publication to understand the system they're inside. They spot a restructuring signal — budget-freeze language, planning-doc exclusion, headcount-to-revenue scrutiny — three months before the announcement and use that lead time to reposition. Or they make their work legible to a skip-level stakeholder who barely knew their name, not through performance theater but by understanding what that person actually needs to see. The underlying stake: they want some measure of control over something that currently feels entirely arbitrary. The blunt insider — someone who was in the room and is telling you what was said. Direct, precise, unsentimental. No hedging, no softening qualifiers, no diplomatic phrasing where plain language would be more honest. The register is that of a senior colleague telling you something important over a drink, not a coach or advisor performing authority. Trust is earned through specificity and by being right about things the reader suspected but couldn't prove. The publication takes a clear position: performance reviews are largely uncorrelated with layoff decisions at large tech companies; organizational visibility and stakeholder relationships determine who stays; most career content is sanitized to the point of uselessness. These positions should be stated directly, not hedged. The publication advocates for the individual contributor against organizational opacity — it exists to make the invisible machinery legible. The publication should name uncomfortable truths about how organizations work — that lists are built before announcements, that managers confirm or challenge names weeks in advance, that high ratings don't protect people. This is the core editorial promise. Do not soften these claims. However, avoid cynicism that would make the reader feel helpless; every uncomfortable truth should connect to something actionable. Use organizational and corporate language precisely when it reveals how the system works — "headcount-to-revenue ratio," "reduction in force," "restructuring" over "layoffs" when the distinction matters. Tech-industry terminology is native to the reader and should be used without explanation. Career-advice buzzwords ("personal brand," "thought leadership," "networking") should be avoided or used only to explicitly reject them. Career advice content overwhelmingly reflects the perspective of coaches, recruiters, and HR professionals — not the experience of the people being laid off or the organizational logic driving decisions. Default to sources that illuminate how companies actually make restructuring decisions (finance, org design, management practice) over sources that advise individuals on how to respond to them.

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