You’d wish, but in my experience individual performance is only a small factor in layoffs. In one layoff I survived, our GM (with 1000+ people) was told who was

You’d wish, but in my experience individual performance is only a small factor in layoffs. In one layoff I survived, our GM (with 1000+ people) was told who was being let go a day before the event. That involved 100+ people. People with above average performance ratings were let go, some with below average ratings stayed. As best we can tell, HR went with laying off senior/expensive employees based on the lack of certain technologies on their internal resume. Of course, your best employees don’t update their their internal resume much, because they are busy with all the work being thrown at them. It was chaos. I’ve also seen companies do layoffs by cutting entire teams. Top performer on a misaligned team? You are also laid off.