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The Pragmatic Engineer · 3 min · Oct 28, 2026
Layoffs impose hidden costs on morale and engineering time
Titus Winters
Titus Winters says layoffs redirect one-on-ones to emotional support and prompt employees to prepare for cuts.
In this episode
Full analysis- 26:05Use deterministic rewrites for large codebase changes8 min
- 1:02:51AI creates value by making harder work possible8 min
- 1:30:46Grade the process, not just the code6 min
- 1:11:38CS curricula still teach for the software of the 1990s7 min
- 43:03Google used readability reviews to spread coding norms5 min
- 58:04Layoffs impose hidden costs on morale and engineering time3 min
- 22:04Abseil packaged Google's cleaned-up C++ idioms4 min
“It is a huge hidden cost to all of that and it's really demotivating.”
Titus Wintersat 59:53 · The Pragmatic Engineer
Takeaways
- Layoff anxiety can turn planning time into emotional support.
- Employees spend work time preparing for possible cuts.
- Adobe avoided broad recent layoffs after seeing morale costs.
About this segment
Titus Winters says layoffs redirect one-on-ones to emotional support and prompt employees to prepare for cuts. He credits Adobe's CEO with avoiding sweeping layoffs after seeing earlier morale and productivity damage.
Titus Winters is a Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe.
Built Google’s Abseil C++ libraries, led its readability program, and co-authored Software Engineering at Google.
Gergely Orosz, Host · Host, The Pragmatic Engineer
Spent four years at Uber heading mobile, web and backend teams; shipped part of its payments system.
From “Software engineering at Google & CS education with Titus Winters”, Oct 28, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
From the transcript The Pragmatic Engineer publishes with the episode.
- 58:17
One of the obvious things that I assume does not do good for psychological growth or is terrible for it is layoffs. Can you tell me, based on your observation, and we've seen, right? We've all been part of it in 2022, 2023. There has been a series of layoffs. Right now, companies are doing it again. Back then, it was to do with interest rates and overhiring during zero interest rates and growth kind of going down.
- 58:44
Now, some companies are actually openly saying that it's AI. Some are not as openly, but we find out that Meta, for example, wanted to reduce scene ties because they thought that AI would be there. From your observations, at a company where a layoff happens, How does it change how software engineers show up, work, think, speaking both about your experience, the people you talk with? I mean, it's stressful.
- 59:11
I've had experiences of there being layoffs in the area and just it'll be weeks or months of every one-on-one starts with, so how are you doing? How are you coping? There's this huge amount of Negative performance influence of like, okay, we got to like emotionally support each other first before we actually even get back to doing like the work. And I'm very skeptical that in the executive accounting on all of this, that they're taking into consideration just the sheer amount of lost productivity and lost time from like, yeah, People are stressed.
- 59:56
People are spending time brushing up their resume in case they're next on the chopping block. People are spending that one-on-one time like in therapy instead of in planning. It is a huge hidden cost to all of that and it's really demotivating. It drives home like it is a Reminder that, okay, this is just a business obligation. This is not a lifestyle choice. And if me putting in extra doesn't give me extra safety on this, Then what's the point?
- 1:00:32
There's a lot of cultural baggage that happens for that. And it's one of the things that I actually really liked about Adobe was Adobe's had the same CEO for a long time. He just stepped down. He has a replacement now. But he was there for the Great Recession crash. And they did some layoffs at that era. And he saw how much it hurt morale and company productivity and all of the rest of that. And And he learned like it.
- 1:00:59
We thought it made numeric sense at the time, but it was not good for the soul of the company. And that's not the company that we want to be. And so Adobe didn't have the layoffs in the last few years. Like there's. Group by group, like local things as things get reprioritized, but it's not this sweeping.