[irrational]

I've survived many rounds of layoffs as long as I have (decades) by refusing all attempts to move me into management. It is always the middle managers that get the boot during layoffs. I have almost never seen developers get laid off (at least not as part of mass layoffs, usually they are laid off because they are plain bad).

[playcache]

You have experienced a certain amount of luck though. I have seen hugely talented teams get fired over a company pivot in direction. The last lot where I knew someone personally , were the WASM folks at mozilla.

[vanusa]

Usually they are laid off because they are plain bad

Or because their managers are bad, or the company is rife with politics.

[irrational]

Not in my experience. The most recent one was a developer who joined every standup from the ski slopes, when asked to work on a particular task responded with "I'd rather not work on that, can you give me something easier?", and failed to ever actually work on anything. We still had to go through the whole drawn out process of working on a performance improvement plan with them. They simply didn't care.

[vanusa]

I don't dispute the underperfomers are the typical case. But I've seen plenty of glaring exceptions. The point is: things aren't always what they seem. And we can't automatically assume that the people who make these decisions are making the right decisions, or even know what's happening under their noses.

BTW if they put the guy on PIP then that basically means they were in the process of firing him already. So if they called it a "layoff" that was for cosmetic purposes.