[steveBK123]

Yeah I've been at smaller firms for last 10 years, but the first half of my career was at 100K+ employee firms. My wife has mostly stayed at such large firms.

High performers underestimate how long you can get away with BS at a megacorp. Quarters to even years is the correct answer.

Guy on my team who we took on from the "layoffs list" of his old team. We were forced to hire from this list before hiring externally. Lasted about 2 years with us & then comes to me one day "Hey I'm gonna get laid off, I don't know when but it's been discussed with HR.. oh anyway I thought it would have happened last year". Suddenly it clicked why his work product had been diminishing by the month with us. It still took them a few months to go through with it. So the guy spent 3-4 years in the firm in the process of trying to / being laid off.

We had another guy who we inherited from a wound-down project, basically didn't count against our budget for the year. His choice was to join our team or be fired. Anyway just weeks into it, he called me one day and said "I have a thing with my family, I can't tell you what it is but I'll be gone for a month". I asked him if he talked to HR and he said yes. I called HR and they asked ME what I wanted to do... I was ~25 years old and this dude in his 40s had a family thing.. sure whatever.

Anyway, as you can imagine he basically disappeared and only touched base on the phone to say he need another month, over&over, etc. I punted it up to HR & my manager. He basically just disappeared for the rest of the year (~6 months) until new years layoffs season..