Just a word of advice for readers who are working at a startup: you will never be wrong by getting as close to the money as possible.

If you are at a startup and working on support tools or platform infrastructure or whatever, maybe you're indispensable. But you'd still be better off if you were doing support tools or platform infrastructure that involves revenue.

(The obvious corollary is that if you work at a startup that doesn't make money, you should find a way to make money, or move to a startup that does make money. I feel like a lot of engineers don't know this.)

I can testify of that.

Of course, your team can be considered strategic one day, then disbanded the next.

I've definitely seen some "strategic" people being shown the door over the past few rounds of layoffs, and at least two boomerangs (laid off, then rehired).

These are very confusing times.

You can always be laid off. The chances are much higher if you work on things unrelated to the core business at a startup that is losing money (or worse, not making money).

Obviously, if you're the junior hire on a team of 1,000 people doing third-derivative things that relate to revenue, YMMV.

It's also the case that things change to the point where "strategic" people become less strategic for any number of reasons (the company changes, they're "rich and tired" to use a marvelous phrase from a colleague, etc.). Under what's been normal circumstances at Big Tech until recently companies often keep such people around anyway because they're probably the sort of people who can be pretty effective fixers with a half-day of work and such people may be happy to keep collecting a bunch of money. But a lot of companies are scrutinizing more today.

The best move is startups that are profitable while being small. I went to a 13 person company out of college that was profitable when I joined. Rode that train till we got bought by a company that isn't profitable and is now doing layoffs to try and fix that. Now even so I'm still in the division that brings in more profit per programmer than almost any part of the company, but I still don't feel as safe as when we were a 50 person company that was still profitable after almost quadrupling in size.

Yep, you should definitely be wary about joining a startup in a drying industry, like B2B. Ask yourself if the customers/clients of said startup are still able to afford spending money on the product. If the customers themselves are another tech company that is struggling due to their VC money going away, probably not the best choice.

Why is B2B dying now, as opposed to previous tech recessions?

Not dying, just drying up and I'm sure there will be a resurgence. If you look at the companies doing layoffs, the majority of them cater to other tech companies who all seem to be pulling the purse strings tighter.