And please, use this time to sharpen your skillset! You'll be back in the grind before you know it, so don't let this little vacation pass you by.
If you want to hire talent, you poach the people who weren’t laid-off but are now more willing to listen to opportunities today.
Generally speaking, they absolutely do. Even in scenarios where an entire org is being cut, star performers will be reassigned to other areas of the company beforehand.
It may sound brash but it'd take either a major failure in management or a failure in reputation-building and visibility for a star performer to be cut during these types of layoffs. That's not to say that good or even great engineers aren't at risk, but you're not going to find "10x-ers" being let go.
I got laid off last week along with 1 more of my 5 teammates.
Let this be a reminder to all of us that we must, to some extent, always work toward making those 1-3 bullet points on our resume at our current position more and more attractive. Never just hang out. Hacky sack is only for lunch breaks, after work, and on the can.
It reminds me (forgive the harshness) of the real estate downturn, when you might be able to buy a foreclosure cheap, but most of the time it's still not a place you can do anything with.