I have personally been the guy that 'stuck around to see if the company recovers'. I stayed for three years with just more of my benefits cut, salary freezes, p

I have personally been the guy that 'stuck around to see if the company recovers'. I stayed for three years with just more of my benefits cut, salary freezes, promised "we'll maybe promote you in six months or so even though you've already been doing your previous bosses job for a year and we refer to you as the SME in the department" multiple times without it happening, etc. When I finally jumped ship, I got a 60% raise and better benefits than I ever had at that company. Meanwhile everyone else who left or were laid off were getting their raises and salary bumps and 401k matches etc that entire time so the opportunity cost of all that lost salary for me was very high. I should have been looking immediately and left as soon as I found something better. As a hint of how they're currently doing, their stock has gone down 71% since I joined seven years ago, and down about 30% since I've left a year and a half ago. I sat and listened to each of their quarterly earnings reports and I think every quarter their year-over-year revenue went down the entire time I was there. I'd still be waiting for things to get better if I was still there. I'm not saying turn in your notice today, I'm saying the company can always hire someone to replace you if they're desperate enough, don't worry about being loyal to it, at the expense of your own livelihood, out of hopes that maybe it'll get better someday. If it does, rejoin the company after it gets better. As long as you didn't burn the bridge on the way out, they'll probably be happy to rehire you. And you might get a better salary that way than if you stayed the entire time. That's not the only time I stuck around, btw. I've been one of the guys that survived an initial layoff just to be laid off in a later round three other times. They were in the video game industry, so I wanted to stick it out until the game was released at least, and thought 'well maybe things will get better by then'. It didn't. I was just unemployed and not making any money while looking for a new job, (severance isn't much of a thing in the game industry, at least not for smaller companies), which also made me a bit desperate to take the first job that gave me an offer, instead of being employed while looking and able to be more discerning.