Welch effect: people first to be laid off are junior members of macroscopically underperforming teams, who had the least to do with its underperformance because

Welch effect: people first to be laid off are junior members of macroscopically underperforming teams, who had the least to do with its underperformance because they were not influential on those teams. (I named it for Jack Welch, father of rank-and-yank.) Consequently, companies tend to lay off from the middle, not bottom.