Senior leadership likely has an elastic workforce designed to contract (not renew contractors) and expand (hire contractors) based on market and business conditions.
I would worry only to the extent that you save money due to uncertainty. Anything else is outside of your control/concern.
Ask to become a team lead, get some of those new engineers working for you. If you've been there awhile you're in a position to do that and there are several benefits: you might become privy to information that explains the hiring. You can keep your own team lean and demonstrate efficiency to protect yourself a bit. There would probably be a pay bump.
You can look for a job without leaving this one. I don’t know what makes you think staying in this job is any safer than taking a different one — so long as you’re still employed while you look. Better that than looking in this economy _after_ a layoff.
You can either leave or stay. If you want to leave, start interviewing. It sounds like you want to stay, so optimize for that. Reduce unnecessary spend, increase savings, and ride it until it ends, either for them or you. Keep the job until you cannot. You can then look for another gig. You can only control what you control, don’t worry about that when you cannot. Optimize within what you can control.
Do you want to be one of the ones that survives the expected layoffs?
It seems like you should make yourself either irreplaceable or otherwise very marketable.
And be ready for the opposite of what you choose, just in case.
Senior leadership likely has an elastic workforce designed to contract (not renew contractors) and expand (hire contractors) based on market and business conditions. I would worry only to the extent that you save money due to uncertainty. Anything else is outside of your control/concern.
Ask to become a team lead, get some of those new engineers working for you. If you've been there awhile you're in a position to do that and there are several benefits: you might become privy to information that explains the hiring. You can keep your own team lean and demonstrate efficiency to protect yourself a bit. There would probably be a pay bump.
You can look for a job without leaving this one. I don’t know what makes you think staying in this job is any safer than taking a different one — so long as you’re still employed while you look. Better that than looking in this economy _after_ a layoff.
You can either leave or stay. If you want to leave, start interviewing. It sounds like you want to stay, so optimize for that. Reduce unnecessary spend, increase savings, and ride it until it ends, either for them or you. Keep the job until you cannot. You can then look for another gig. You can only control what you control, don’t worry about that when you cannot. Optimize within what you can control.