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Surviving the Chopping Block?
2names asks: "Having been involved in cutbacks at several companies, I am finding it more difficult to remain focused on my job tasks even when I am not the subject of the cutback. For those of you who have survived the chopping block (sometimes repeatedly), how do you continue to produce quality work in the face of constant staff reductions?"
1) Do not document your code. Or, if you have to document it, make sure your creation is so arcane that it would take someone years and years to recreate it. In the case of Network Administrators: Do not document your network.
2) Under no circumstances are you allowed to train your replacements. If they outsource you, let your replacements spend a year of their lives trying to figure out just what it was that you created, or five years of their lives re-writing from scratch what you just spent the last five years of your life writing. For Network Administrators: Ditto.
I cannot tell you how important these two points are. Your only leverage over "THEM" is that you know how things work, and they don't. Why do you think Microsoft refuses to reveal the internals of NTFS, or the .DOC format? Answer: So they can make money off them.
PS: Get the hell out of any environment where you even think you might need to be engaged in this sort of pre-emptive intellectual sabotage. Find people you can trust [don't ask me how you know they'll prove to be trustworthy, but I'm not so cynical yet that I don't believe they fail to exist altogether] and do something constructive & rewarding with your life. The very best way to do this is to START YOUR OWN COMPANY AND BE YOUR OWN BOSS!!!
"EMPLOYMENT" IS JUST A POLITE EUPHEMISM FOR "SLAVERY"!!!