&gt; How do you know they were dead weight?<p>I&#x27;ve never seen any large company which didn&#x27;t have at least some employees whose value was less than their salary. Frequently, such employees can even confer negative value.<p>Moreover, even if you don&#x27;t have <i>any</i> deadweight, you do have an ordering of employees. Your top employees are the ones most able to find a job elsewhere and hence very unlikely to accept a pay cut.<p>&gt; Hell, for that matter, why do you assume that you wouldn&#x27;t have been among those deemed &quot;dead weight&quot; and laid off?<p>I don&#x27;t. Even if I were supposedly in the &quot;dead weight&quot; I would rather be laid off, get severance, and find a new job which would pay me the salary I had negotiated previously. A pay cut is changing the terms on which I agreed to work and would frequently push the job below my BATNA.