Here come the surplus again, what happened to You? have wasted too many years in the wrong company or position. A colleague of mine uses a personal story, Phillip Tsen was part of AT&T, he was a manager and engineer, his entire team was disposed, but there are Reasons Why a Layoff Can Be a Blessing in Disguise, today they are working for competitors, most of them were hired by Google, and others relocated to the UK's technology firm, they were always together to the end.
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Surplus just means more than needed. If you have surplus employees, you have more than needed. Surplus value or surplus income is a completely different thing. It's just an adjective.
In Marxist economics the surplus is the profit. It's what capital take for itself instead of sharing with labor. Which is why capital has more money than labor and can buy politicians to keep it that way. So using the term 'surplus' to refer to unnecessary employees is a bastardization of the term. And it disguises the real meaning of the word, to the benefit of capital. Better, to me at least, to use terms like 'targeted employees' to more clearly indicate what's happening. Even 'overhead' looks at it through the eyes of capital, not labor. Employees should look at through the lens of labor, hence 'targeted employees' or something better.
This sort of thing people shouldn't forget. A surplus can do one of two things to your psyche; 1) it can make you feel like damaged goods even if you were a performer or 2) you can test the market to see really how underpaid/valued you are.
I'm also hearing (with one example myself) that being laid off at ATT doesn't come wit outside stigma as once thought. Most are learning now that ATT often gets rid of its best talent, well because leadership at ATT is shortsighted and broken.
Att's mistakes are another companies gain.