Tech workers have found themselves in a world where they could be laid off without warning, regardless of their performance or seniority. It’s unsettling, and kind of scary.
A lot of advice about dealing with layoffs focuses on financial concerns, like having an emergency fund built up, paying off debt, and so on – all excellent advice, and arguably more important than what I want to discuss here. (Actually, if you haven’t even started any of that, stop reading now and work on that instead.)
Tech companies that lay off their employees are often generous with severance, but they are also often cruel in vanishing them from their workplace within a few scant hours – or even instantaneously. When that happens to you, you’re permanently locked out of your (um, former) work computer and network. All your files and account accesses become unreachable.
This can be a big problem, because tech professionals accumulate artifacts, like scripts and other customized, personal tooling, that they use to make them more effective at their jobs. If yours only live in your employer’s systems, and you get laid off, you lose them all.
So, let’s discuss what you should do to avoid losing your work artifacts due to a layoff.
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