Are there any roles or departments, relevant to this audience, that are particularly safe?

I imagine you cut mostly from loss-centres as with profit centres you can tell who is making and who isn't, right?

Who hires and who do you present your recommendations to, what are their decision criteria?

Very generous of you to do this. I really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Grammar and manners

2. Loss centers are too simplistic. I mean, hr is a loss center but you still need it. But the question you should ask yourself every day is "am I making the company money today?" If the answer to that is not a clear yes, figure out how to get yourself to that point.

3. Your relationship to your manager matters. And your relationship to your manager's manager. Your job is to always make them look good. If you have conflict....well...

4. I worked for CEO. We would often (and ideally) do this from top down, where we literally reshaped the team that reported to CEO. (And fired members of the current team which didn't find a seat.) Then we would cascade the process layer by layer.

5. Because layers are choosing the layers below them, and often "pulling up" to reduce expensive and useless managers, being a good contributor really matters

6. Sometimes none of this matters. You are in a whole division that is shut down. Tough luck.

7. If you are in a company which is laying off bottom layer people without a huge reduction in middle management. Leave. It is terribly managed. Usually the "workers" are not the problem, it is the huge number of relatively useless middle and mid senior management who are much more costly. Ideally they should go first.

Also, in your opinion what is an absurd salary?

The question to ask is "am I building the product that is being sold, and is the value I add a 10x in terms of revenue?"

I hesitate to give a comp number as I've never been inside FAANG, but more inside large corp. But anything over $500k you definitely are always being looked at there.