Wrong on the large layoffs point. Plenty of them occurred with no warning this year. And often with little to no justification, not only to the individuals let go but even simply from a business rationale.
They didn't claim their experience was universal. They explicitly qualified their statement. So, you said they were wrong in _their_ experiences, which is calling them a liar and a bad interaction overall. If you'd simply replied that their experience perhaps wasn't indicative of the industry as a whole, _then_ you would have contributed something meaningful to the conversation.
> in my neck of the woods.
> Everywhere I worked at
You:
> Wrong
How can you tell them they are wrong in _their_ experiences?