The tech sector, after a decade of remarkable growth, has faced significant layoffs. These events affect everyone-not just those directly impacted, but also the colleagues who remain. For those let go, the challenges of finding new opportunities in a tough market are profound. Meanwhile, those who stay often grapple with shaken trust in management, increased workloads, and heightened stress about their own job security.

Much has been written about these emotional and logistical challenges. However, one crucial aspect remains underexplored: the impact of layoffs on technical debt and how it evolves in downsized teams.

The Hidden Cost: Layoffs and Technical Debt

Before layoffs, teams were sized to handle a certain volume of software development and maintenance. When teams shrink, their capacity to maintain and improve existing systems inevitably diminishes. Initially, this impact may go unnoticed-thanks to robust engineering practices and inertia from prior work. But over time, cracks start to appear: outages become more frequent, bugs slip into production, and the pace of delivering new features slows.

These are classic signs of growing technical debt, and they’re becoming increasingly visible across the industry. For instance, while many organizations have rushed to integrate AI as a “must-have” feature, their core products often show little improvement. Leadership frustration grows, and solutions like returning to the office are proposed, though they do little to address the root causes.

Addressing the Problem: Reducing Software Footprints

To mitigate the impact of layoffs, companies must face a hard truth: reducing engineering staff without reducing the software footprint is unsustainable. Cutting headcount should go hand-in-hand with cutting code. Every line of code represents a maintenance burden, and the less there is, the more teams can focus on delivering value to customers.

1. Turn Off What You Can: Start by identifying and decommissioning unused or underutilized systems. Quick wins here will immediately reduce the load on your remaining staff.

2. Adopt Alternatives: Replace custom-built solutions with open-source alternatives or SaaS products whenever possible. Migrating to these solutions may take time, but the payoff is significant: fewer systems to maintain and greater bandwidth to focus on your core offerings.

Enhancing Productivity: DORA Metrics and Developer Experience

Once your software footprint is reduced, you can turn to improving productivity. DORA metrics-measuring deployment frequency, lead time for changes, time to restore service, and change failure rate-offer a clear framework for identifying bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Here’s how to start:

1. Empower Developers with Better Tools: Provide developers with high-performance laptops and tools like Copilot or AI-assisted code review solutions. While these aren’t magic fixes, they eliminate small but cumulative inefficiencies.

2. Rethink Testing Strategies: Shift focus to integration and end-to-end tests, which often provide more practical value than unit tests alone. Avoid rigid mandates like 100% coverage, which can lead to wasted effort on low-value tests.

3. Modernize Your CI/CD Pipeline: Ensure your continuous integration and deployment systems are fast, reliable, and transparent. Outdated tools like Jenkins, while powerful, can become bottlenecks. Investing in modern alternatives can save both time and effort.

Streamlining Dependency Management

With robust CI/CD systems in place, automate dependency and language updates wherever possible. Tools like Dependabot can help, but full automation-where pull requests are automatically merged if tests pass-saves even more time. Proactively test your applications against upcoming versions of languages and frameworks to prepare for breaking changes. This can be done with doubling your CI pipeline with the result from the new version only generating report, but not blocking your release.

Conclusion: No Silver Bullet, but a Path Forward

Managing technical debt in the wake of layoffs is a daunting challenge. It requires tough decisions, from reducing the software footprint to modernizing processes and tools. While there’s no silver bullet, these steps can help your organization adapt, maintain stability, and eventually regain momentum.

What strategies has your organization implemented to address these challenges? Share your thoughts below-I had love to hear from you!