Or, quite simply, the performance of an employee or division is not the only determination in layoffs. You could lay off half of teams and fill them in with ostensibly high performers in other teams, and then be worse off than before because the high performer was dependent on context and fit.

Or, you may have a division that is profitable, but it takes an outsized attention in the organization relative to its profitability and the loss of revenue is made up for focus in the rest of the organization. (Ideally, you would find a way to spin that off or sell it, but there are times where the tight integration makes this unfeasible.)

And yes, there is disconnection from the on-the-ground reality too. (and all sorts of things) - but this all goes to say that layoffs, when executed, often are not correlated with individual performance.

What you’re saying is the nice, rational way to describe a scenario.

There is that, and it does happen that way often.

There is also sometimes people just do stupid, self harming things. Either because they are not able to properly process/know/understand what the consequences will be, or because their short term incentives encourage them to at their long term detriment.

Or because the organizational incentives make it worthwhile for them to harm the actual organizations long term interests, and they will be rewarded for screwing over the organization this way.

It’s easy for engineers in particular to look at 2+2 and assume that everyone else knows 4 is the obvious answer, and hence will act appropriately. and they just need to be shown the truth if somehow they don’t understand this

But that isn’t how people often work, especially when dysregulated, stressed out, under outside pressure, etc.

Often, there are many people between the decision makers and the folks who know the actual truth and the inevitable consequences who have incentives that will make them actively hurt anyone trying to tell the decision makers the truth - often because the decision maker implicitly or explicitly wants it that way.

even engineers, though it’s often hard to ‘know’ that when you’re in the middle of it.

Many people will burn their lives to the ground until everyone agrees 5 is the correct answer. Or happily reassure their boss 5 is the answer while burning everyone else’s lives to the ground.

That can make many real life situations very surprising and frustrating for engineers in particular.

Because how could someone do that based on ‘wrong’ (usually just not the same) information? It’s stupid!

Because sometimes for many people, the individual/self interested ‘smart’ thing is to be as ‘stupid’ as possible. And that strategy is not something someone can just change on a dime. It’s inherent.

And sometimes people are just stupid. Even otherwise really smart people.

All that is also true. In both cases, it's not about the quality of the engineer or the work.

Also, sociopaths exist and they are often in management.

But in both cases, the key insight is that layoffs are often past the control of the engineer.

Yup, definitely. Often not only past the engineers control, but sometimes even past the control of the immediate management chain.

With the caveat that everyone responsible is also going to attempt to deny/deflect/reverse victim and offender, etc.

It’s amazing how ‘helpless’ some management/execs get when unpleasant decisions need to be made.