I'm saying that large companies in tech tend to have a large developer headcount, often working on projects outside of the core business. As such, I think those employees are more expendable.

Teams that open source stuff typically have leveraging roles, i.e. they build things that several other teams depend on.

Orthogonally, typically large companies have a maslow hierarchy of sorts: for every infrastructural endeavor, there may be a number of others that are more "nice-to-have" niche projects that aren't really critical to anyone else's ability to deliver results.

The most vulnerable employees are those on niche projects, despite these projects being internally focused (as opposed to open sourced). Infra folks whose work may be open source are typically less vulnerable because they do in fact work on critical, well, infrastructure.

I do not think he is suggesting any course of action beyond awareness that their position is less stable than it might be in other jobs.

Worth pointing that your position at a unicorn is probably more secure than at a random small startup.

Ohh....I get it now. Jeez, I need more coffee.

I've always worked in manufacturing so people aren't that easily expendible. Takes a long time to train someone and without them, one of the line shuts down or gets less productive / slow.

How long do people usually stay at your company?

Average is probably 8 years.