[larrymyers]

This seems logical. The software engineers are likely going to be some of the highest paid employees, so laying off underperforming engineers is going to help reduce labor costs substantially.

Many of these engineers have been hired for new business units that didn't end up being profitable with cheap credit going away. Others might be in business unit that is purely a cost center.

Nothing has really changed over the past few decades. Regardless of your role strive to be part of the company that produces the company's profit. Try to avoid parts of the company that are viewed as cost centers and are constantly under the eye of finance as they manage costs. You will find how are you treated in good and bad times radically different.

[onion2k]

The software engineers are likely going to be some of the highest paid employees, so laying off underperforming engineers is going to help reduce labor costs substantially.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but often businesses lay off the high-performing-but-best-paid people because that drives the biggest savings while reducing the vanity headcount metric less, especially in companies where the effort of the team greatly outweighs any individual. They assume (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) that the team will carry on without the 'superstar' people. There's also an assumption that the best people will leave when there's a layoff (mostly rightly), so getting rid of them means maintaining control of who's gone.

There should never been an assumption that you're safe from layoffs because you're the highest performing person on the team. Sadly.

[ChuckNorris89]

High performing people adding the most value to the business were rarely the highest paid ones as they had long tenure and the best institutional knowledge but got mediocre wage increases as a punishment for being to loyal too the business.

The highest paid ones were usually the ones who job hopped the most during the times of economic boom. They added little value where they went as their tenure was too short for that, but the market was so hot and the dev demand so high that tenure length and adding value didn't matter back then.

If you knew how, where and when to jump ship during the past boom, you could be an incompetent buffoon and you could still end up making way more than the tenured workers actually adding value to the company.

Now the companies are attempting to correcting that "mistake".