When Michael Permana, a seasoned software engineer at Amazon, sensed that his position was becoming vulnerable, his response was not one of panic or despair but of calculated composure. Rather than succumbing to anxiety about an uncertain future, he made the deliberate choice to take paternity leave—a decision that, though unconventional in such circumstances, would ultimately prove strategic. His growing apprehension over job security surfaced in February 2023, the moment he was formally placed on a performance improvement plan—a structured process within corporate environments often perceived as a precursor to termination. For Permana, this move served as a blatant indicator that his tenure at Amazon hung by a thread. “I felt a deep sense of desperation,” recalled the 47-year-old California resident, explaining that widespread internal sentiment suggested once an employee entered a performance improvement plan, the likelihood of remaining at Amazon was minimal.
Recognizing the precariousness of his situation, he wasted no time and immediately launched a proactive job search. Yet he remained realistic—knowing that securing a new and suitable role could take weeks or even months, especially given market conditions. The prospect of losing his paycheck while still bearing the financial weight of a mortgage filled him with unease. It was then that a creative solution emerged. His daughter, born the previous May, had made him eligible for several remaining months of paternity leave, due to expire when she approached her first birthday. By temporarily stepping away from his duties, Permana realized he might effectively extend his employment status—buying valuable time to continue his job hunt under the company’s payroll umbrella. “I decided to take advantage of the moment,” he said, describing the leave as a calculated pause that allowed him to stretch what time he had.
This decision, bold yet pragmatic, ultimately proved fruitful. Less than one month after resuming work from his leave, Permana received and accepted a new offer—a software engineering position at MobilityWare, an established mobile gaming developer. His experience underscores a broader reality of contemporary corporate life, where even talented employees must sometimes navigate shifting expectations through ingenuity rather than mere endurance.
Across the broader economic landscape, overall layoff rates remain historically modest, yet an unmistakable shift has occurred among white-collar professionals. Knowledge workers—those whose livelihoods depend on expertise and mental labor—have increasingly borne the brunt of corporate restructuring. As companies recalibrate their operations, the hiring pipelines that once brimmed with opportunity have slowed considerably, complicating reemployment efforts for displaced talent. Business Insider’s conversations with dozens of such professionals reveal a consistent pattern: large organizations initiating extensive strategic transformations often involve consolidating management tiers, redistributing funding toward emergent artificial intelligence projects, and systematically removing underperforming or redundant roles in an effort to curb expenditures.
While some employees discern early warning signs of layoffs, others find themselves blindsided—terminated despite lengthy service records, solid performance reviews, and employers showing robust financial performance on paper. Facing such unpredictability, a growing cohort of workers has begun adopting a more strategic mindset. Instead of relying solely on diligence and hope, they now actively prepare for potential disruptions. This preparation manifests in diverse ways: preemptively applying for alternative roles, diversifying income through side ventures, or even covertly maintaining two concurrent sources of full-time employment.
According to Laura Ulrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, this pervasive unease stems largely from the current hiring environment. Reduced recruitment levels mean that if workers do lose their jobs, they are likely to face intensified competition and prolonged searches before finding new opportunities. Ulrich notes that, in stark contrast to the vigorous hiring cycles witnessed only a few years earlier, today’s employment landscape feels markedly restrained. “If you become unemployed now, reentering the job market has become significantly more challenging,” she observed. In addition, the accelerating corporate fascination with artificial intelligence—hailed by many as the next frontier of economic transformation—has compounded anxieties. Even as its long-term implications remain uncertain, employees increasingly worry that automation and AI-driven tools could ultimately render their roles obsolete.
The publication continues to hear from professionals across sectors, many eager to share firsthand how internal restructurings, mass layoffs, and slowed hiring pipelines have reshaped their careers and sense of security. Business Insider invites such voices to connect confidentially via encrypted communication channels, ensuring their perspectives contribute to the broader understanding of workforce adaptation.
The phenomenon is far from isolated. Consider Eduardo Noriega, a veteran engineer based in Seattle, whose reckoning with professional insecurity dates back to 2009. That year, Microsoft laid off roughly 5,000 employees—a moment that spared him personally yet profoundly shifted his worldview. “When I witnessed that event, it dawned on me that job security, as we often imagine it, is an illusion,” said Noriega, now in his fifties. Determined never again to be so vulnerable, he resolved to cultivate a financial buffer—establishing his own business as a supplementary income source. Over subsequent years, he meticulously built a staffing firm in his spare time, nurturing it into a profitable enterprise.
When Microsoft eventually released him in May of the previous year, the tables had turned. His side venture now generated more revenue than his corporate salary. Although he had long hesitated to resign voluntarily—fearing the loss of a steady paycheck—the layoff became the push he needed to fully commit. “I never dared to leave,” he reflected. “Then Microsoft handed me the layoff notice, and in a strange way, it felt like liberation.”
Similarly, for workers like Reed—a pseudonym used by a thirty-something software developer in New York—the repeated experience of job loss has fostered both resilience and creativity. After enduring four separate layoffs between 2020 and 2023, Reed resolved to diversify his employment risk in an unusual way. “I realized the only real countermeasure to constant unemployment was to maintain two full-time jobs,” he explained. By early 2024, he was earning approximately $280,000 annually, dividing roughly sixty hours each week between two remote roles, each employer unaware of the other’s existence. The strain was real, he admitted, yet the sense of security outweighed the sacrifices. “I need both positions to sustain my life with my partner,” he said. “At this stage, it doesn’t feel optional.”
Others, like John, a millennial software engineer in California, take a somewhat lighter approach. Rather than doubling up on full-time work, John supplements his primary income with a part-time side role, bringing his expected annual earnings to around $225,000, about $60,000 of which comes from the additional job. His primary employer is aware that he maintains some form of side work but remains unaware of its specifics. Over time, John has also fortified his professional security by investing in long-term networking. He maintains close relationships with startup founders and hiring managers, confident that their support would facilitate a quick recovery if his current position were ever dissolved. “I’m fairly sure I could line up another full-time role pretty quickly,” he said decisively.
Not all forms of preparation are entrepreneurial or duplicative. For some, forward thinking begins with prudent financial planning. Earlier in the year, when Intel underwent a strategic pivot, digital marketing strategist Kent Ha sensed trouble ahead. Having already experienced layoffs twice before—in 2015 and again in 2020—he approached the warning signs with a sense of learned vigilance. He reached out to his financial advisor that June, consolidating a contingency plan to manage potential income disruption, while simultaneously beginning to apply for new positions. “I figured at worst, I’d receive an alternate offer as backup; at best, I’d retain my job without making further changes,” Ha explained. When Intel eventually announced layoffs that July, he was already deep into his job search and grateful for having taken initiative.
For others, such as Phil Coachman, a former senior cloud solutions architect at Microsoft, building savings served as an emotional as well as financial cushion. Microsoft’s broad 2023 layoffs left him uneasy, and over time, ongoing dissatisfaction with his role pushed him toward change. In mid-2024, after nearly a decade at the company, Coachman began exploring new opportunities. “I just wasn’t happy there anymore,” he admitted. “I wanted to continue doing creative work without living in a constant state of anxiety about being next on the layoff list.” When the search proved difficult, he ultimately decided in January to resign outright, drawing confidence from the financial buffer he had wisely accumulated. “I saved enough that even if it took me a year to find the right position, I would be all right,” he said. “It was just about mustering the courage to leap.”
After several months of networking, that leap paid off. Through the recommendation of a former Microsoft colleague, Coachman interviewed with AI startup Databricks and, by April, secured a new role there. While his network could not shield him from the initial layoff waves, it played a pivotal role in ending his unemployment and restoring confidence in his professional future. “Every opportunity I’ve had since leaving Microsoft has come entirely through my personal connections,” he reflected. “It’s those genuine relationships that make all the difference.”
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-job-security-side-business-overemployment-savings-strategy-2025-11
