Whether it’s good or bad for business, the practice of layoffs is becoming more widely accepted. This can serve as a reminder to employees not to become compla

Whether it’s good or bad for business, the practice of layoffs is becoming more widely accepted. This can serve as a reminder to employees not to become complacent, which is one reason that companies do it. An unfortunate consequence is that employees become more likely to game the system to keep their jobs. Gaming the system can take many forms : avoiding risky assignments, covering up chronic problems, and blaming others. Once people see that these approaches result in greater job security then the incentives for doing the right thing become obscured. At my last job, a cyber-security startup that had a large layoff, this process of gaming the system ruined the software engineering culture. No one wanted to fix a bug, or talk to a customer, or implement a new process, without first checking to see how it would affect their job security.