What are the warning signs that I'm about to be laid off, and how should I prepare?

Company's been acting weird — hiring freeze, leadership turnover, vague answers in meetings. How do I know if a layoff is actually coming, and what should I do in advance?

Common early signals include: a hiring freeze or sudden budget scrutiny, your manager or leadership being unusually vague about your team's future, being excluded from meetings or projects you'd normally be part of, sudden restructuring or reporting-line changes, or the company missing financial targets/announcing a broader downturn. None of these guarantee a layoff is coming, and plenty of companies go through rough patches without cutting staff, but if you're seeing several at once, it's reasonable to quietly prepare rather than wait and hope. Practical prep: update your resume and LinkedIn now (not after), reconnect with your professional network before you urgently need it, understand your company's severance policy if one's published, make sure you know how much you have in emergency savings, and get a rough sense of your industry's current hiring market. This isn't about panicking or job-hunting openly in a way that damages your current role — it's about not being caught flat-footed if it does happen.