Navigating Uncertainty

I’ve sat through the slow dread of waiting to find out if my role still exists more than once. Sky Betting and Gaming changed hands several times while I was there (BSkyB, then private equity, then The Stars Group, then Flutter), and each transition brought its own restructuring. The biggest came in 2022, when Flutter consolidated its UK and Ireland operations. The industry-wide rounds since - the ones you’ve read about in the news - I’ve experienced from closer than I’d have liked. If you’ve been through a restructure or a redundancy process, you know the feeling. If you haven’t, imagine knowing that cuts are coming to your part of the organisation but not knowing who, not knowing when exactly, and not being able to do much about it. For weeks.

You check Slack more than you should. You read too much into calendar invites. You oscillate between “it’ll be fine” and “I should start applying now” several times a day, and your concentration and sleep both suffer for it. The people around you are going through the same thing, and nobody quite knows what to say.

Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off globally according to Layoffs.fyi, and the companies that were supposed to be the safe bets have all run multiple rounds of cuts. If you’re reading this, there’s a reasonable chance you’re living through some version of it right now, or supporting someone who is.

Each time it’s different in the details and remarkably similar in how it feels. The dread doesn’t get easier with practice, but you do learn a few things about what helps and what doesn’t.

Why uncertainty feels worse than bad news

Uncertainty about something bad happening is more stressful than knowing it will happen. In one much-cited study, participants performed a task where they might receive an electric shock - and the most stressed people weren’t the ones who knew a shock was coming, but the ones who didn’t know.

This maps directly onto what a redundancy consultation feels like. You’d almost rather just know. The waiting, the ambiguity, the reading of tea leaves - it’s exhausting in a way that a clear outcome, even a bad one, wouldn’t be.

Your brain treats uncertainty as a threat because it can’t prepare a response. When you know what’s coming, you can plan and adapt. When you don’t, your brain stays in a state of alert - cortisol elevated, defaulting to what Kahneman calls System 1 thinking - fast, emotional, driven by heuristics rather than careful analysis.¹ You become more reactive, more anxious, less able to think clearly about the situation you’re actually in.

Loss aversion explains why the downside looms so large: we experience losses roughly twice as intensely as equivalent gains.² The possibility of losing your job, your team, your routine, your identity within a company feels significantly worse than the theoretical upside of whatever might come next.

What’s actually happening to you

What you’re feeling has a lot in common with what Pauline Boss calls ambiguous loss - a loss that’s unclear, unresolved, without closure. In a redundancy consultation, you haven’t lost your job yet. But you might. You haven’t lost your team, but it might be restructured. You’re grieving something that hasn’t fully happened, and that’s genuinely one of the hardest forms of loss to process because there’s no clear object for the grief.

People often move through something like a grief cycle during these periods, and they tend to get stuck in bargaining. “If I deliver this project well, they’ll keep me.” “If I’m more visible, I’ll be safe.” This is entirely natural, and it’s also largely disconnected from how selection processes actually work. That gap between effort and outcome is part of what makes it so draining.

There’s also an identity component that’s particularly acute in tech. Many of us have built our professional identity tightly around our role, our company, our team. Big tech campus culture reinforces this - the perks, the facilities, the social connections, the sense of belonging to something important. When that’s threatened, it’s not just a job at risk - it’s a whole ecosystem of identity.

For some colleagues, the stakes are higher still. If your right to remain in the country is tied to your employer through a work visa, losing your role starts a clock on finding a new sponsor. I can’t speak to the immigration specifics, but that reality shapes how a lot of people in tech experience these moments, and it’s worth being aware of when you’re supporting someone who seems to be taking it harder than you’d expect.

Repeated rounds of layoffs also erode the psychological contract - the unwritten expectations between you and your employer. Even if you survive this round, the implicit deal has changed. The company that felt like a long-term home now feels contingent.

And surviving brings its own challenges. The research on survivor syndrome - what happens to the people who stay - is remarkably consistent: motivation drops, guilt lingers, workloads rise while morale falls.

What you can actually do

The distinction that helps me most is between problem-focused coping (taking action to change your situation) and emotion-focused coping (managing your response to it). Use the first for the things you can control, and the second for the things you can’t.

You can’t control whether you’re selected, but you can control how prepared you are and how you experience the process.

The things within your control

Start with money. Sit down and work out your actual runway - savings, notice period, redundancy package if applicable, monthly costs. Many people avoid this because the numbers feel scary. In practice, knowing your runway almost always reduces anxiety compared to the vague dread of not knowing.

Update your CV and LinkedIn while you’re at it - not because you should panic, but because doing it restores a sense of agency. You’re making a choice rather than waiting for something to happen to you. The same goes for taking stock of what you’re good at, what you’ve built, what you’ve learned. Redundancy has a way of making you feel replaceable. Writing it down, even just for yourself, counters that.

And talk to your network. Not in a desperate, “I need a job” way, but genuinely. Reconnect with former colleagues, catch up with people in your field. You may be limited in what you can say - many consultation processes come with confidentiality requirements, and even where they don’t, there’s often an implicit expectation about what you share externally. But you can still have real conversations, catch up with people, and quietly strengthen connections without disclosing specifics. Most people have been through something similar, especially in the current climate, and you’ll be surprised how much support is out there.

The things outside your control

There’s strong evidence that even brief mindfulness practice - ten minutes a day - measurably reduces cortisol and anxiety, and the best-known programmes were designed precisely for situations where the stressor is outside your control. You don’t need to become a meditation convert, but it helps to notice when you’re spiralling into future scenarios that haven’t happened and gently bring yourself back.

Social support is one of the most consistently powerful buffers against stress across all the research. Talk to colleagues going through the same thing. Talk to friends and family outside work who can offer perspective. Consider talking to a professional if the anxiety is significantly affecting your daily life. One caveat: notice when support turns into going over the same fears with the same people, again and again, without moving forward. Talking helps, but rumination loops don’t.

Cognitive reframing doesn’t mean telling yourself “everything happens for a reason” or “this is actually an opportunity.” It means shifting from “this is a threat I can’t handle” to “this is uncertain, and I’ve handled uncertainty before.” People who can make that shift are measurably more resilient under stress.

Exercise reduces anxiety - one of the most robust findings in psychology. Sleep matters enormously, and uncertainty disrupts sleep, which worsens anxiety, which disrupts sleep further. Eat properly. It’s the foundation everything else sits on.

What to avoid

Doom-scrolling Blind and layoff trackers. Checking these feeds multiple times a day doesn’t give you useful information. It gives you a drip-feed of anxiety that keeps your threat response activated.

Performative overwork. Working fourteen-hour days to “prove your worth” during a consultation is understandable but rarely changes outcomes and reliably burns you out. Selection criteria in a well-run process are based on role requirements and skills matching, not on who stayed latest last week.

Isolating yourself. The instinct to withdraw and deal with it alone is strong, especially for people who see themselves as self-reliant. Resist it. This isn’t a problem you’re supposed to solve individually.

What we need from each other

Psychological safety matters more during periods of change and uncertainty, not less. And it isn’t just a leadership responsibility - it’s built by everyone in a team.

A few observations from being around these situations.

When someone tells you “don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” it feels hollow if they don’t actually know that. The most helpful thing anyone can offer - whether they’re a manager, a tech lead, or a colleague - is honesty about what they know and what they don’t. People can handle uncertainty far better when they trust the information they’re getting. And saying “I’m also finding this hard” - if it’s genuine - creates more safety than projecting calm you don’t feel. People can tell the difference, regardless of your level or role.

Keep your team meetings, your 1:1s, whatever social rhythms your team has. When everything feels uncertain, the fact that Tuesday’s standup still happens communicates something about continuity. When you ask people how they’re doing, actually listen. Don’t rush to fix or reassure. Sometimes people need to say “this is hard” and have someone say “yes, it is” rather than “but look on the bright side.”

If you’re the person everyone leans on - and in many teams it’s a senior IC, not just the manager - make sure you have your own support too. A peer group, a mentor, a friend outside work. Everything in the section above about coping strategies applies to you, whatever your role.

The bigger picture

Nassim Taleb describes things that gain from disorder as antifragile, and a career can be built that way: diverse skills, genuine relationships across a broad network, financial resilience, the ability to adapt and learn. None of that requires you to be grateful for a redundancy consultation, but all of it means that uncertainty, over time, can make you more capable rather than less.

The tech industry looks different to how it did five years ago. The assumption that a role at a major company meant long-term stability has been tested, repeatedly, across the industry. That doesn’t mean these aren’t great places to build a career - they are. But it does mean that the ability to navigate uncertainty, to stay effective and grounded when things shift around you, is a more important skill than many of us expected it to be.

If you’re a senior engineer, a staff+ IC, someone people look to when things get difficult - these moments, as painful as they are, are where a certain kind of leadership gets forged. The kind that changes how your team experiences a crisis, even if it never appears on a CV. Being the person who stays calm, who checks in on people, who helps others think clearly when their own thinking is clouded - that shapes you in ways that normal times never could.

And it bears saying clearly: none of this is a reflection of your worth or your competence. Redundancy selection is a structural process. It’s about roles and budgets and strategic direction. The people affected are not the people who weren’t good enough. That’s not how it works, and if you’re telling yourself that story, challenge it.

If any of this is useful to you, or you want to talk about your own experience, I’d welcome that conversation.

The obvious caveat: I’m an engineer, not an HR professional or a lawyer, and nothing here is legal or financial advice. Consultation processes differ by company and country, and your situation is your own - for decisions that matter, talk to someone qualified to advise on the specifics.