MY DEEP DIVE

Why smart marketers keep getting laid off — and how to stop confusing effort with value

Layoffs in tech feel personal.

You replay every decision.

You question your skills.

You wonder if you chose the wrong career.

But after this conversation, I’m convinced of one thing:

Most marketers aren’t failing because they’re bad at their job.

They’re failing because they’re playing the wrong game.

In this episode of My Way Marketing, I sat down with Hattie the PMM to unpack why capable, experienced marketers keep getting cut — and why effort alone no longer protects you.

What followed wasn’t motivational.

It was uncomfortable.

And it was honest.

When budgets tighten, marketing is still one of the first functions on the chopping block.

Not because it doesn’t matter.

But because its value is often invisible.

Sales feels tangible.

Product feels concrete.

Marketing feels “long-term.”

And in short-term environments, long-term thinking gets punished.

This creates a dangerous dynamic:

And then get blindsided when the cuts come.

The irony?

The people doing the most work are often the easiest to remove.

Hattie put it bluntly:

Most marketers are trained to:

That works early in a career.

It stops working the moment you’re expected to own outcomes.

Meanwhile, the people who keep moving up aren’t always the best executors.

They’re the best game readers.

They understand:

They’re not louder.

They’re more strategic.

One of the most important ideas in this conversation was career ownership.

Not in a hustle sense.

In a judgment sense.

Ownership means:

It’s the difference between those two quotes:

That gap is where most careers stall.

This part hit hard.

Many of us were trained — socially and professionally — to be agreeable.

To wait our turn.

To do what’s asked.

But in modern organizations, compliance is not rewarded.

Clarity is.

Judgment is.

Initiative is.

People-pleasing doesn’t make you safe.

It makes you invisible.

And invisibility is dangerous when markets turn.

We also talked about something rarely discussed in marketing:

personal profitability.

Not greed.

Not status.

But leverage.

A profitable career gives you:

The goal isn’t to chase money.

The goal is to stop being dependent on a single employer’s perception of you.

That changes how you show up.

And how others treat you.

This episode reinforced something central to My Way:

Careers don’t compound because of tactics.

They compound because of judgment.

You don’t need:

You need:

Because the game is being played — whether you like it or not.

If you were laid off tomorrow, would people say:

or

That difference is everything.

If this resonated, the full conversation with Hattie is linked here:

And if this sounds like an interesting topic here you can find another conversation about why it’s important to build a personal brand before you need it:

Ivan