I've been told (many times) that “the good employees never get laid off”
Like others, I am similarly perplexed as to who would believe something like this who isn&#x27;t <i>extremely</i> inexperienced[0] with regard to how many businesses operate[1].<p>I have reviewed resumes for decades and a few gaps in employment due to being laid off -- even if they indicate an employee did a <i>terrible</i> job at the company.  And maybe the problem is my interpretation of the statement.  I&#x27;m interpreting it as the inverse &quot;Only bad employees, specifically people who would make bad employees anywhere in the capacity of what they were doing, get laid off.&quot;<p>I have been laid off, once, but I won&#x27;t speak for myself.  The best boss I have ever had -- and within his department and to his direct manager (a VP), he was considered a <i>top performer</i> got <i>excellent</i> reviews, had been with the company for a <i>decade</i> with a track record that was <i>all sunny.</i>  To give you an example, during a very serious outage -- with <i>enthusiasm</i> at 1:00 AM on a Friday, this Director volunteered to drive an extremely expensive piece of equipment about 12 hours, alone, to another data center to keep one of his guys&#x2F;gals from having to make the trip (in a place he, and few others, would be interested in visiting for fun).  He was laid off for political reasons involving one individual -- a co-worker who was disliked as much as this guy was liked, was a constant road blocker, bike-shedder and, honestly -- I have no idea how he lasted as long as he did[2].<p>I&#x27;ve known people who were laid off because of bait-and-switch scenarios.  In one case, a company was purchased (by a private equity owned competitor) a month after the new hire started.  This new hire had negotiated employment terms that sacrificed some pay for additional time off, included a very flexible IP agreement and explicitly did not include a non-compete.  After purchase, time off was standardized which caused him to lose two weeks.  All of the agreements were replaced with an employee handbook that was mandatory to sign.  There were no options for altering the agreements.  This wasn&#x27;t an &quot;acqui-hire&quot; (almost the opposite, the large business was in a legacy market, the smaller was &quot;shiny&#x2F;new&quot; and rapidly expanding&#x2F;making money -- they were hoping to integrate some of  the old into <i>all</i> of the new).  They laid off my buddy and several of his co-workers due to their decision not to sign the new terms -- especially at the salary offer -- which defeated the purpose of the acquisition, for the most part.<p>I&#x27;ve known one person laid off because the company (lender) went under.  Over a period of 14 months, he watched 1,500 employees get let go.  He was &quot;a grunt&quot; at the time, but ended up being one of the final 5 people laid off.  There were endless &quot;organize these files&#x2F;move these things&quot; tasks and he did them 10X faster than anyone else.  Besides him, there were 1,500 people and a few thousand before that who were laid off because &quot;the company was rapidly failing.&quot;<p>There are countless stories of companies expanding into a local market and receding, entering a new market and exiting after failure, being purchased by a large competitor who &quot;already has twice as many people as the other company doing that thing&quot; or &quot;does that thing so differently that they don&#x27;t have <i>anyone</i> in that role.&quot;  And especially in companies where &quot;software development isn&#x27;t everything they do&quot;, when they merge with another company, some of the projects that Company A does will be cut.  Some of those developers -- sometimes (often?) the <i>most technically capable</i> ones[3] -- are let go.<p>Despite how it is often used -- at least in principal, being laid off is supposed to be a simple matter of: We don&#x27;t have a need for this person ... &quot;It&#x27;s not them, It&#x27;s Us(tm)&quot;, we&#x27;re an &quot;at will&quot; employer, &quot;these things happen&quot; and we&#x27;ll pay higher unemployment rates for our mistake in hiring someone we did not properly prepare to put to work.  Cold, simple, and shouldn&#x27;t really say anything about the employee unless it&#x27;s a pattern of their employment (and they&#x27;re not intentionally taking jobs at startups&#x2F;other places with high-risk to employment status).<p>Good employees get laid off <i>all the time</i>.<p>[0] Not implying &quot;worked too few years&quot;, but maybe worked too few jobs or not in varied enough sectors (from an economic standpoint), or company sizes&#x2F;ages.<p>[1] ... I can only speak for &quot;the US&quot; and for the company&#x27;s I&#x27;ve worked for and those that others I know have worked for -- small sample size but near-universal behavior.<p>[2] It sounds like I have a vendetta against the guy but he and I barely crossed paths.  When we merged with a competitor, he lasted about a week.  I was present at the new HQ when the incoming CIO walked into our room, &quot;The Guy&quot;&#x27;s name came up, he said &quot;oh, yeah, I forgot to handle something.&quot;  He was 15 minutes late to an all-staff meeting about 30 minutes later.  He needed the time to tell &quot;The Guy&quot; that his service would no longer be needed.<p>[3] Sometimes because &quot;they know the old systems so well they are resistant to moving to the new systems&quot; but sometimes because &quot;they&#x27;re really popular with people who are resistant&quot; and getting rid of that person will cause <i>others</i> to fall in line (I have one specific case that I know took place this way because I tried to convince the person who made the decision that it would blow up in his face).