[silisili]

A lesson I learned at my first programming gig. I worked with a lot of really smart people, one might describe as 'rock stars' or 10x or whatever. The company was flush with government contracts and it showed.

Apparently one of the largest contracts wasn't renewed, and there was a couple rounds of back to back layoffs. Though none of them were affected, every single one was gone within a year. The only people that remained were those who couldn't get a job elsewhere, and those super comfortable who weren't necessarily bad but not setting the world on fire. The company was pretty much a zombie until it was bought out years later.

[fma]

Last year GM offered Voluntary Separation Package. Those who had 5 or more years of experience would get 1 month of pay + prorated bonus + health insurance compensation.

You can guess who took the offer. 5000 of your experienced employees who have the ability to pursue other opportunities.

[ryandvm]

Absolutely. The good engineers are always the first to leave a smelly ship. Then you're just left with engineers whose chief skill is kissing their manager's ass.