Over at Wired, there is an article that suggests layoffs are good both for you and for the technology industry. It’s a provocative title, to be sure. The argument is that workers in Silicon Valley have a culture of not doing work they don’t like — so they job-hop. Not for promotions or climbing the corporate ladder, but because they didn’t like the work. And that results in some great opportunities for companies:

As it happens, that lack of loyalty has been a key driver of the Valley’s rapid innovation over the past three decades. AnnaLee Saxenian, author of Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, puts it this way: “Job-hopping, rather than climbing the career ladder within a corporation, facilitates flows of information and know-how between individuals, firms, and industries. When combined with venture capital, it supports unanticipated recombinations of technologies and skill.” In other words, we have Twitter today because a bunch of engineers who were trained at other companies quit their jobs and brought their expertise to Evan Williams’ side project. It’s like biology: In an ecosystem where microbes are promiscuously swapping genes and traits, evolution speeds up.

Now this wonderful ecosystem of voluntary job-hopping is coming to a screaming halt because technology people are starting to play it safe and stay in their current positions longer because there aren’t that many open positions available, just like the rest of the country.

So the churn from layoffs is good because it will speed up the evolution of the microbes, sorry, workers — for industry. But for the workers there? What’s in it for them?

Layoffs, the article notes, don’t carry the stigma they used to anymore. Plus you can work on cool things like iPhone apps — if you can get any financing.  That’s about it. Which means this:

So if you’re clinging out of fear to a job you don’t want, you’re doing yourself and the rest of us a disservice. This is still Silicon Valley: Getting kicked in the behind might just be your ticket to getting ahead.

So industry gets new ideas and recombinations of technology and skills from workers voluntarily leaving their jobs to work in new environments — or from layoffs. But with layoffs, workers get to feel better about it because the stigma of a layoff is almost gone. And, if you can get it, you might still get something cool to work on if you can get the financing. Someday. Maybe.

Of course, getting laid off means you have no income. No neat stock options or restricted stock to help pad a savings cushion between those cool voluntary job-hopping gigs. Networking is now with other laid off coworkers, not necessarily people working on the interesting things.

But you should not have fear of a layoff though the rest of the world does. No need for you to worry about your finances, your family or the probability of finding a new job any time soon. Companies are OK to lay you off because…wait for it…getting laid off will be good for you — and it helps companies too!

Apparently, the difference between voluntarily leaving a position is the same as being laid off from a position. The difference between a good or even decent job market is the same as being in the worst job market for the last 20-years. And your behavior should be the same because it helps industry.

Not so much.

I’ll pass.

There’s a lot of job advice out there — some of it is even contradictory within the same article. But some of the advice is just pathetic. Here are my nominations for the 3 worst pundit methods to make your job layoff-resistant.

Arrive early and stay late

The clock, after all, is what counts, isn’t it? Who needs a manager when we all know that butt-time in the chair is where it’s at?

Time spent on the job tells no one about your accomplishments nor does it guarantee success to the department or company. Instead, working longer hours begets working even longer hours to look better than everyone else. Pretty soon, we’ll all be sitting in the cube 20-hours a day just so we can look good.

Look, it’s management’s job to optimize resources to meet the goals of the company or department. That doesn’t get done by counting hours in the chair. Instead, it’s managing to the goal attainment in the department.

If you have a manager that simply measures time in the office, you don’t have a manager.

Look busy even if there is nothing to do

This one cracks me up every time. Really…nothing to do? If that is reality where you work, here is the one step to overcome this: ask your manager for something to do that contributes to the department goals. Doing so will get you working on something that contributes to the success of the department and the team. That is what will make your job layoff-resistant, not “looking busy.”

And if you get nothing to do from your manager that contributes to the goals, then — instead of looking busy — you need to get busy and start looking for another job. Companies are not employing people who are not contributing to the business — they are laying them off.

Looking busy will catch up with you and bite you in the you know where.

Have work-life balance

Most every pundit I know offers up having work-life balance. This is built on a false premise — that there is only “work” and “life.” And because there are only two of these things to choose from, you need to “balance” them.

Hogwash. The truth of the matter is there is only “life.” In our life we make choices about what we do with that life. Indeed, in most of our lives there is work and partners and professional development and children and personal development and hobbies and finances and retirement planning and visiting with neighbors and seeing our family across the country and having dinner with our friends and going to worship and looking for a new job. Plus so much more.

See? It’s a life. It’s not work-life balance.

Instead, here’s what counts

Results. Seriously, that should be it. Just results. Unfortunately, you go down the lists of most of the punditry and you never see this little gem. Contributions matter. Meeting department goals matters. Helping customers matters. Continuous improvement matters.

Some executive somewhere is focused on the results produced. And if your manager isn’t focused on your results, you are at risk no matter what. If you aren’t accomplishing your tasks and goals, you are totally at risk of a layoff.

Worse — without accomplishments, you aren’t that attractive for hiring in a different company either because you can’t show how your work contributed to your department’s success.

So focus on getting to accomplishment, OK?

What’s the worst advice you’ve received on how to keep your job?

There are plenty of reasons to try and stay with your current employer. Like having a job, health insurance, stock options or restricted stock, bonuses coming, or something else that enables you to decide to stay rather than risk going.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consistently evaluate your situation. Just because companies are raining down with layoffs doesn’t mean you should cling to what you have at all costs. Because there are costs. Costs like not wanting to go to work on Monday. Putting up with a disgusting manager who will submarine your career. Or losing your marriage because of the hours you are working.

One aspect of self-management is control and the other is perspective. In these trying times, it is easy to get lost in the weeds of work and lose the perspective that it is time to move on.

While Gen Y is taking it on the chin with unemployment numbers, all of us should learn this valuable lesson from them: it’s OK to change jobs even in the midst of a recession. In fact, often you should.

I’ve always had this simple career management formula, learned from one of the best managers I’ve worked for in my career: Job skills plus job performance equals opportunity.

If you have job skills and you can show your accomplishments, a recession is a great time to seek out opportunity. Get closer to what you want to work on, not what you are forced to work on.

Perform well doing your work. Evaluate what you want to do next. Then go after it.

If you thought 2008 was bad for layoffs, welcome to 2009. With layoffs often announced with earnings — and over 900 of the S&P companies announcing earnings this week — you can expect a lot of layoff announcements.

CNN notes that today is “Bloody Monday” with over 71,000 layoffs announced. Yeah, 71,000. Whole cities are smaller than that.

Stay confident, focus on your work, and build your network. This is the time to be a Cubicle Warrior.

Here’s the list of companies that have laid off so far in 2009 — some 200,000+ — in what CNN describes as “body count.” We really need to figure out how to describe layoffs as layoffs and not body counts…

Ouch.

You gotta hand it to the management team at Merrill Lynch: they know how to screw everyone else for their own good.

Three days before the Bank of America merger, some months before the regularly scheduled timing, Merrill’s management doled out bonuses like it was 1999. Not bailout time.

Market Watch’s headline — Merrill’s bonus heist may be the last for many — has it characterized right: heist. As in stealing; some $3-4 billion in bonuses.

In an age when employees are being laid off left and right, with no universal health care and their life savings taking a 40% haircut in the stock market due to the management greed of these companies, stealing money for bonuses three days before being bought to save your company is the lowest form of morals.

Pigs at a trough treat each other better.

Win Smith — that Smith of Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith –  not so long ago gave a speech about how Merrill Lynch lost it’s values. The culture of Merrill was that of “Mother Merrill.”

Today, that culture is gone, along with the company. Good riddance. Mother is right. Mother something.

UPDATE: Office redecoration while Merrill burns

There are now reports that while slashing expenses at Merrill, the CEO was redecorating his office to the tune of $1.2 million:

Thain spent $1.22 million of company money to refurbish his office at Merrill Lynch headquarters in lower Manhattan. The biggest piece of the spending spree: $800,000 to hire famed celebrity designer Michael Smith, who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for just $100,000.

If your management team is wondering why your employees are not engaged in their work and your goals, you can start looking at this example as one reason why. Tone deaf doesn’t describe it.

When you can’t trust your management team, knowledge workers talk to each other. Because they can.

When you can’t trust your management team, people look for every signal they can find and then interpret the signal in relation to the worst that can happen.

When you can’t trust your management team, you start looking at the meetings you are attending and question the content of the meeting. Even if the meetings before were stupid and accomplished nothing, now the same stupid non-accomplishment meetings are interpreted as bad news on the employment front.

When you can’t trust your management team, sudden changes that would have seemed to make sense a year ago no longer make sense. And the dispersion of teams among other teams on failed programs now look like a way to reduce your capacity for accomplishing anything with the new team. So you’re expendible.

When you can’t trust your management team, knowledge workers talk.

You thought this post was about airline seats, right? Nope. Layoffs.

The best euphemism for getting fired: “you’ve been upgraded.” As the Workplace Prof Blog noted from a reader who was laid off with:

We are going to upgrade you with immediate effect.  We are going to allow you to move on in order that you can you use your talents and skills more effectively and thus upgrade your career and opportunities.

The Evil HR Lady calls this an “embarrassment.”

Here’s my take: any management team that calls a layoff an “upgrade” is hereby upgraded to “idiot.”

Can management just say what a layoff is? You know…a layoff?