[cableshaft]

At least in my experience a round of layoffs is almost always a sign of worse to come. If not more layoffs than more ways to tighten the belt, like reducing benefits (had my contracted annual bonus removed, reduced severance policies, worse health insurance options, and my 401k match taken away before, at one company), freezing raises and promotions, letting people leave by attrition (which always happens after a layoff) without backfilling those people (and thus their responsibilities get added to your plate), etc.

It doesn't always happen, I'm at a company that had layoffs 8 months ago and was mostly isolated to just that so far. Helped a few months later they clearly won some major business that helped boost things for them again. They're back to hiring again, even.

But that's one exception to my experience with five other companies that did layoffs. Of those five, three basically shut down entirely (two startups and one small business), and one I just heard closed down the department I worked in and laid everyone off on January 1st this year (I left over two years ago, saw a coworker post about it on LinkedIn). The last one I'm not sure, but recent Glassdoor reviews suggest they tightened the belt again recently and did a lot of what I mentioned above in the past few months.