I wanted to be a SWE ever since I was a young kid, and now after a undergrad + masters degree I was one of the first people in my batch to get a job. I just moved to a new country for my first job and I love it here already, it just feels sad imagining if I do get laid off and I'd have to go back to where I was doing my Masters (and even that would be limited time visa before I have to go back to my very under-developed home country). I do want to just mentally let go of the anxiety and just focus on performing good at my job but with all the recent layoffs it feels hard, my own company laid off a lot of people last year and because of that their glassdoor rating is kindof bad. I've been spiralling a bit just reading the glassdoor reviews of people blaming the management of uprooting their lives. Other people who changed cities or countries and were left jobless and were trying to navigate in a extremely bureucratic environment.

I have a 6 month probation in which I can be laid off pretty quickly, I just need to learn to not worry about the stuff I can't control.

Background: I don't like choosing outfits in the morning for work. Due to whatever combination of mental issues/oddities I have, in the past I've gotten stuck at point for a very long time. After reading about how someone like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg wears the same thing every day, I decided to try a version of that to reduce the number of decisions I had to make each morning. I didn't actually want to wear the same thing every day, because then I'd become "the guy who wears the same thing every day" at work. So I decided to have a number of predetermined outfits that I rotate through. I have some number of dress shirts of various colors/patterns and a matching number of pants of various colors to go with them. I have a few pairs of shoes in the typical colors that I just match with the pants. I've been doing this for years now, and it's great for simplifying my daily routine, but I occasionally wonder if people notice.

So my question is: How many outfits do you personally think is the right number such that no one would notice? Alternatively, what number do you think would be the best for whatever reason?

To be clear, this is just a fun discussion question. I'm not really looking for help or advice. I won't say how many outfits I have on rotation right now to avoid anchoring.

I live in the EU. I recently applied for a credit card, and the banker asked me (about my job): "Is it a management role?"

I realized that it is a question I have been asked several times in the past by banks. I tried a cursory google & Reddit search, but I haven't found anyone being curious about this.

I'll try here then. Does anyone know why bankers ask this question? How does it matter? Are "individual contributors" seen as worse/riskier customers than managers?

I have my own informal, anecdotal opinion, but I'm hoping to hear some more informed answer.

I work at a Series A startup. I joined on the promise that it would be 16 backend engineers a year from when I joined. It never grew and maxed out at 8 (non-eng headcount experienced the most growth). Fast forward to 18 months and it's looking like between parental leave, illness, responsibility differences, and general departures, in a few weeks I'll be one of 2 backend engineers actually writing code, and one of 3 backend engineers overall.

There's 1-2 resume-building projects I'd like to stay for, but it's likely that one of them will get deprioritized. I've never been happy in this role for a slew of reasons, reasons for which others have left. This could very well leave us at 1-2 backend engineers in Q1-Q2. We are hiring, but I suspect we'll only backfill 1 role as 1-2 engineers are on "temporary leaves" (but one leave is 3 months, the other is basically indefinite).

Any advice on what to do in this strange situation? I'd like to say that I'm considering quitting and want to train another backfill, but it could hurt me more than anything else. I'd be interested in more options (no backend engineer's comp has increased in the 18 months I've been here except 1 underpaid / underleveled person) or a small sabbatical of 5 weeks. I wouldn't mind a senior title but lots of qualified engineers have been rejected for it so I stopped putting weight on the title. But all of those are a little rude to accept if I quit less than 6 months after.

edit: removed some typos, clarified some timelines e.g. months -> weeks