You will be on the next round of layoffs regardless of your loyalty. "You were updating linkedin" is the excuse. It could be anything else. But the reality is that they found someone cheaper.

I heard non-squeaky wheel look more loyal and are kept around.

"Loyalty" has been dead for decades, just look at that many accounts of successful teams and people that have been laid off in the last year alone. The same exact stories of hard working and dedicated people being laid off on a whim can be found going back decades.

There's a reason that so many people now get prompted by moving "horizontally" between companies, very few companies today properly reward loyalty, if anything most actively incentivize individualism and disloyalty.

Staying with one company made sense when pensions were prevalent and unions were strong. Tech actively disincentives people from staying in one place too long, and instead of changing that they seek to limit mobility via NDA's, collusion, etc. It is a grossly atavistic world they've built, and the whole idea is to keep wages as low as they can.

Definitely. But also expensive non-squeaky wheels get replaced with cheaper wheels if upper management is in the mood of cost cutting.

Is there always a cheaper wheel to replace cheap non-squeaky wheels ? Asking for a (n-already-too-)cheap(-to-their-liking) non-squeaky wheel friend of mine.

There is always perceived cost cutting of outsourcing.

There is always "we fired 20% of the people, now their workload is on your shoulders or you will also be fired".

There is always "here is a book titled 'use agile to deliver twice as fast' now the deadline is in 3 months instead of 6 or else".

The only defense against that is having more options.

Yeah, in the end it's about always having a plan B at any time.

Wheels gotta move I guess, it's in their nature after all.

Avoidant attachment at its best.

Or they spare you, betting you'll leave on your own terms and they won't need to pay you a severance.