>> If you're a top performer, you're going to feel like a 10% pay cut is very unfair, and you're going to be able to get another job elsewhere fairly easily, ev

>> If you're a top performer, you're going to feel like a 10% pay cut is very unfair, and you're going to be able to get another job elsewhere fairly easily, even in this environment. Nobody outside of your immediate team, manager and may be at best a few people apart from them know you are the top performer. It's not like sports or movie industry that people know who you are. Where you go next, you have to work from the beginning to prove you are a top performer. And that take 2+ years too. Overall rage quitting for these reasons is a bad move. >>When done correctly, layoffs give 100% of the pain to 10% (or whatever) of the people, but you get to select the worst-performing people. In nearly all companies the rating system is fixed. And largely depends on political lobbying at the management levels. There is literally no way to know who are the real top performers. In fact in many companies, money comes from top projects/products, not top performers. This is why often the companies let go people on the lines of which businesses they want to be running or shutting down, not which people they want to keep and let go.