Amid layoff fears, workers try 'loud working' to get noticed, from solving key problems to padding presentations

Workers are reacting to the fear of layoffs more than to layoffs themselves ^[1]. Business Insider reports that job-hopping has become harder and that cuts feel like a constant threat, even though mass job cuts have not yet reached the bulk of the economy ^[1]. Vicki Salemi, a career expert at the jobs site Monster ^[3], described where the energy goes. "Leaving may feel risky, so workers may concentrate more energy on demonstrating their value internally where they already are," she said ^[4].

The evidence is a set of individual accounts. Business Insider says some workers are loud working ^[2], but it does not measure how many or include a manager's view of how reviews are changing.

Bohra's version is prioritisation ^[5]. "Once you solve the critical problem, you automatically get visibility," he said ^[6]. Putting more effort into two or three problems out of 10 leaves seven or eight with less of it ^[1]. For one engineer the choice makes sense. If a whole team follows the same rule, the same seven or eight problems go short at once ^[1]. The manager who set the priorities is the person best placed to see that.

Some of this is ordinary career sense: people have always pushed for credit, and managers have always rewarded whoever fixed their problem. In Bohra's case I think that holds, because his visibility came after a result. The former Meta employee describes the other kind. Asked to give a presentation with little material behind it, he stretched it into a long one full of "fluff" ^[8]. "It felt like I was trying to make something out of nothing, but I wanted it to look like I'd actually done the work," he said ^[9]. What his manager saw was a presentation with no solved problem behind it ^[8].

The current Big Tech employee's account shows where the cost lands. Layoffs at her company last year changed how the team worked ^[12]. "Everyone on my team started putting in more effort than what they used to do to show, 'Hey, I am an important resource,'" she said ^[12]. When a colleague moved to a project with more senior leadership exposure, she was left with most of the lower-visibility one ^[13].

Rilling's posting reaches people well beyond any one employer ^[14], and she was frank about who gains from it. "It is, I won't lie, a very good gain if you're either trying to do consulting work or if you're looking for a new role," she said ^[15].

Salemi said loud working can backfire when it never stops: vocalizing every accomplishment, dominating meetings, taking credit for a collaborative assignment, or marketing work instead of getting it done ^[10]. "There's a tactfulness about it," she said ^[11].