What to focus on when a company decides to shut down — and your team, and your job, are on the list.
Today I want to write about a difficult leadership topic: how to lead in difficult times — what to focus on when a company decides to lay off a large part of its workforce, including your team members, maybe even yourself.
This is what I am personally facing right now. My company decided to close down its business within a timeframe of nine months. As someone responsible for around 50 junior and senior developers — frontend and backend engineers, test automation engineers, QA engineers, and other team leads — the weight of that as a Head of Section is significant. These are people who will lose their jobs. Me included. The decision has nothing to do with a bad product. It is a clear financial decision made by a board detached from the market.
I have been in tech leadership for 25 years. I have built teams, scaled products, and navigated a lot of difficult decisions. But shutting down something your people built over a decade — that carries a different weight.
So the question is: in that period, what do you focus on? How do you support your people? What kind of freedom do you give them, and what skills do you hand them?
50+
Engineers & leads I am responsible for through this shutdown
9 months
Timeframe to wind down a product built over ten years
25 years
Years in tech leadership — this is still the hardest situation I have navigated
1,000+
Job interviews conducted — now used to help my people land their next role
THE HARDEST PART
Caught between two seats
As a leader you are caught between two seats. On one side, you are a representative of your company. Leadership is not only about the good times — you also have to guide your people through the hard ones. But this is more than a difficult period. This is the end. On the other side, you carry direct responsibility for your people. You hired them, trained them, gave them everything they needed to grow. For many, it has become more than a work relationship. Personal friendships have developed over the years.
That is the hardest part — also emotionally.
Sometimes I do not have answers. And what do you do in that case? You are honest. You do not cover uncertainty with management talk. You give your people the space to feel understood, to know it is okay to be scared. That is a normal response to uncertainty. Nobody can predict the future. But when you are well prepared and open to change, that is the best foundation you can have going forward. Knowing that — really knowing it — is what steadies you as a leader.
ACTIVE SUPPORT
More than writing CVs
My support currently spans from helping people write compelling CVs to advising on which skills to highlight and how to position themselves. One of my core tasks over the last 25 years has been conducting job interviews — somewhere north of a thousand in that time. By now I know what interviewers look for. I can spot where someone undersells themselves, where someone overstates their role, and how to present yourself as reliable, willing to learn, and willing to take responsibility — always. Because that is what I have expected from my people, and what I try to reflect back to them now.
In practice that means sitting down 1:1 and going through a CV line by line. Not just polish — actually challenging them: can you defend this claim in an interview? What was your specific contribution here? A lot of developers undersell themselves. A few oversell. Both are problems I can help with.
But my involvement does not stop at CV creation. I am available as a personal reference for recruiters or future managers. This is not yet common practice in Austria, unlike in other markets where letters of reference and direct references carry real weight. Adding a personal reference to an application can make a genuine difference over other candidates. And I will actively use my network — former colleagues, industry contacts, friends. There is nothing more effective than the proof of someone you already trust vouching for a new hire.
REFRAMING THE SITUATION
Maintenance mode as a gift
The product we built over the last ten years is technically mature — ahead of a lot of what gets presented at major frontend conferences. That is not a boast, it is context. We are not firefighting. In a situation where everyone knows the product will eventually be replaced by external software, stability takes priority over new features. That puts us in maintenance mode.
Maintenance mode, in this situation, is actually a gift.
Developers who are not firefighting have headspace. They can think about what they want to do next. I actively encourage that. Use this time to build something for yourself. Explore areas you have been curious about but never had time for. For some of my people, this might be the first real opportunity to do that in years.
WHAT TO FOCUS ON
AI is the obvious answer — and for once it is the right one
AI is on everyone’s mind right now, and for good reason. Our company uses GitHub Copilot, and I advise everyone to get a proper foothold in AI-assisted development — agentic coding, personal workflow automation, model evaluation. Not as a trend to chase, but as a shift in how technical work gets done.
What I tell my developers: do not just use Copilot as autocomplete. Learn to prompt with intent. Understand where the model is weak. Build workflows where you define the direction and let AI handle the mechanical parts — boilerplate, test scaffolding, documentation, repetitive refactoring. Then stay in the loop. Review everything it produces. The skill that matters is not whether you can use AI — it is whether you can tell when AI is wrong.
AI is not going away. We as developers and tech leaders need to understand its principles and shape an environment where AI does not replace us, but takes over what it is genuinely better at — freeing us to operate at a higher level. Control it. Direct it. Take the decisions it cannot.
The developers who will thrive are the ones who treat AI like a capable junior colleague: fast, occasionally overconfident, and needing clear direction. That is a skill you can start building right now, while you still have the safety net of a job.
TEAM CULTURE
The truth is acceptable
A company shutdown hits team culture hard. Getting people back out of the valley of demotivation takes sustained effort. A lot of personal conversations followed the announcement — redirecting people, giving them clarity and something to hold onto in uncertain times.
„The truth is acceptable.“
— Management coach, during a leadership training I will not forget
It sounds simple. In practice it is not. When the news is bad, the instinct is to soften it, frame it, manage it. But what people actually need is clarity. Do not get lost in speculation. Focus on what you can control. Accept what is out of your range. Do not waste energy on things you cannot change. That advice applies to leaders as much as it does to the people they lead.
Whatever is true for my people also applies to me. I also need to decide how my journey continues from here.
Currently I do not let that affect my daily work. Not because it would not, but because I have developed strong enough routines to stay the course even when the path is hard. I am as dedicated as before — caring for my people, making decisions, showing up. Leadership means performing through the ups and the downs. Anything less would not be fair to the people counting on me.
When the time comes and I know everybody is taken care of, I will properly close this chapter and prepare for the next one.
I am curious, open to challenges, and I like working with people, technology, and interesting products. If you know of an opportunity that fits — let me know and get in contact with me.