People have odd ideas about why people get let go during layoffs.
Sometimes a company will cut an entire team, then hire half or more back as contractors, then re-hire them as FTEs a year or so later, because it helps with the bottom line and taxes, not because they want to get rid of all those people.
Sometimes a company will let an entire group go because upper management doesn't know what they do. Wells did this in 2018 and we're still feeling the pain in my department and with my customers (internal). And I mean stupid, senseless pain.
Sometimes people are let go because someone gave some darts to a monkey and pointed at a spreadsheet on the wall with everyone's names.
I'm only half joking about that, it can be pretty random sometimes.
And sometimes managers are asked to go all Jack Welch on their staff and rate them from 1 to 4, and then cut all the 4's, and if a manager says "I have no 4's, I have a bare bones staff as it is" they'll get a pretty good talking to and be forced to pick people on their team to let go.
I was told to do that once, I just delayed it until my management moved on to something else shiny and forgot about my team.
I did that once with offshoring, too, I just kept telling my boss' boss that I couldn't make the numbers work for replacing US based employees with offshore. I did hire offshore people for off hours, which worked out pretty good, but I kept my US people. This was not at Wells.
I think Wells is a pretty corrupt bunch, and I know there are politics in play and bad managers here and there, but layoffs are more nuanced and complicated than most people know.
Good people and toxic people get let go.
Good luck to all in 2020.
Reposted this from @12MiOcs3-abbk . Great post. As sad and as shallow as all of these reasons are, this can serve as a good reminder that being let go rarely has anything to do with us or our performance at work.