[morgante]

> How do you know they were dead weight?

I've never seen any large company which didn't have at least some employees whose value was less than their salary. Frequently, such employees can even confer negative value.

Moreover, even if you don't have any 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.

> Hell, for that matter, why do you assume that you wouldn't have been among those deemed "dead weight" and laid off?

I don't. Even if I were supposedly in the "dead weight" 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.