Re: Just to play devil's advocate here
The last time I worked for a Fortune 500 tech company (one that gets name-checked frequently here), they had a policy in place of laying off 5% of their workforce every year. The people were selected to be fired by upper management -- in-the-trench managers (the ones who actually know which workers are gold and which ones are lead) were not part of the decision-making and had zero say.
It didn't escape anyone's notice that the people fired were mostly the most experienced (and thus expensive) engineers. Everyone dreaded layoff day because it meant that, every year, there was a substantial loss of product knowledge and available skill, and it made life hell for those who remained while everyone scrambled to overcome the loss.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
