> As the original commenter noted, the person who was honest about what they really thought was the one laid off when the time came

It could have been for any of 100 other reasons.

It really boils down to whether your manager is bullshit or not. If they are, switch teams or switch jobs. If you can't be honest with your manager, it's not going to work out.

Humans, in their majority, are natural liars and dislike the truth (even when they say the opposite)

Treat managers as you will most tech companies: the information you share will most likely be used against you.

Being honest is not in your best interest, nether is lying, not divulging information (privacy) is your best approach.

Unless necessary, be very careful what you share; your manager represents the company, and their interests are not often aligned with yours.

Indeed you bring up a good point. There is risk. However, you never know what is the complete reason for someone getting fired, unless you are the one doing the firing. There are lots of things that do not get disclosed. It's also very easy to assume reasons if you're a bystander and be 100% wrong. I've certainly done that a lot.

It could easily have been that the other person got fired for completely unrelated reasons. It of course could also have been that he did in fact get fired for the reason suspected. In this case the question is again - what does the parent commenter want to optimize for? Is it peace of mind or job stability?

If the situation of having to lie is really bothering them, then perhaps the risk of things going wrong is worth taking? The original commenter is the only person that can decide that.

Also, if they keep lying, what's going to guarantee that they will not get promoted because they accidentally did well enough? Or if, indeed they keep getting not promoted, then will that look bad? Are they in an "up or out" level?

I think it depends on what kind of unambitious it is. I have one guy who I don't connect with much who I estimate is pretty much like the OP. Has a kid, doesn't want a lot of stress, doesn't really want to proceed further, but is happy to do his current job and has a lot of experience as a senior.

But at the same time, this guy just jumps in whatever you ask him to do, and figures it out pretty quickly, doesn't need hand holding and is fairly independent and gets stuff done. He does his job and is a very low maintenance employee overall. He also updates his tickets / status as you ask him. He's an adult.

Since I know I don't have to be responsible for coaching him or moving his career forward or fixing issues or reminding him to do his job or figure out what to do, he's pretty good! He gets the job done and I don't have to do a lot of work for and is a reliable guy. If layoffs come, he would not be on the bottom of the list.

Other employees that don't want to be ambitious, or are picky about their workloads, that I have to remind constantly to do stuff, create conflicts I have to resolve and so on are significantly more work for the manager. If they are also not performing then yes, they would be the people on the bottom of the list.

So overall, if you want to be unambitious to advance after the terminal level of 'sr engineer', be a low stress easy employee to manage who is overall productive and have a good or neutral personal relationship with and it's really doubtful you'll be on the layoff list anytime soon. It lets managers be more effective and bigger with their team, because one high maintenance employee has the workload of 5 low maintenance ones.

Also only %10 of engineers ever advance into management or staff engineering leadership positions, so it's somewhat expected there will be a lot of people who are not going to go further anyway.

You could couch you being unambitious in asking your manager, how can I become a low maintenance employee for you? What would make your job easier in respect to managing me? How could I reduce your stress load? Tell him you don't want to be a manager (super common in engineering) but you do want to make life good for you, him and the team.

> I'm unconvinced that (from the employee's perspective) the best way to engage with management or HR is radical transparency.

I totally get that, and I was like that before being a manager. But once you become a manager, you realize there are a bunch of things that are actually very helpful to be transparent about, and other things that are not and it can be hard to communicate what those are unless you have a buddy who's a manager elsewhere and likes talking about the good and bad of their job outside of work. I really recommend that people do the "tour of duty" for 2 years into management to understand what it is. It will make your future career way less stressful and everything makes way more sense. https://twitter.com/mipsytipsy/status/1345574901818609664