# How to prepare for losing your programming job

DevFeed: [How to prepare for losing your programming job](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-to-prepare-for-losing-your-programming-job-20990.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://codewithoutrules.com/2020/05/14/prepare-losing-job/>)

Author: Itamar Turner-Trauring

Published: 2020-05-14T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Itamar Turner-Trauring](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/itamar-turner-trauring.md>)

Topics: [Programming](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/programming.md>)

Tags: [financial](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/financial.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [job](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/job.md>), [programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming.md>)

## AI overview

This advice article explains how programmers can prepare for potential job loss by building financial reserves, reducing expenses, maintaining a professional network, keeping skills current, demonstrating those skills publicly, and developing fallback plans.

## Source excerpt

Another week has passed, and another 3 million people in the US have filed for unemployment. While the current situation hasn't impacted programming jobs quite as much, it's just a matter of time before the economic damage hits most everywhere. There will be layoffs, and plenty of them, and occasionally whole companies shutting down. So even if your job is secure now, you might still lose it in the future. How can you prepare? What can you do to reduce your future risks? The first thing you need to do is come up with a plan, which is what this article is all about. In particular, you will want to: Try to make sure you have the necessary financial resources. Make your future job hunt easier, by building a network, making sure your skills are up-to-date, and making sure you have visible public proof of your skills. Come up with a series of fallback plans if things don't go well. Let's go over these one-by-one. Money in the bank If you lose your job, you lose your paycheck--but you still have to pay your bills. And after the dot-com bust, the last big tech recession, it took years for all the jobs to come back If you have at least six months of living expenses in cash, that's a good start. If not, it's best to think about how to get there. There are two sides to this: If possible, you need to cut your expenses, which will both allow you to save and reduce how much money you need for each unsalaried month. See this more detailed article. Ensuring your financial assets, if you have any, aren't correlated with your job. If you own stock in your own company, you are making a double bet: if the company goes down, you will lose money and your job. If you work for a startup that needs to raise money soon, a crashing stock market will also greatly reduce the viability of your current job. More broadly, if you own stocks and to a lesser extent corporate bonds, how correlated are they with your ability to keep a job? Even more broadly, how much of your net worth is tied to the te