The issue is that a lot of these people may have to take pay cuts and make less than what they were previously earning.

Especially if you were L4+ at Google or something. Not many companies that'll pay $350k+ for a software engineer. Those that will are not currently hiring.

From a super lame C# dev at a boring company in a flyover state that's never gotten stock comp-- I used to fear a collapse in big tech that would cause an influx of skilled devs flooding into boring companies and displacing mere mortals like myself. Now that it's actually happening I'm very amused at how unemployable the SV cohort is to normal companies. To them you're all annoying overpaid assholes that whine about tools and process instead of just doing work. They've got 10 years of experience with ephemeral front-end frameworks, while the companies still hiring deploy Java and build UIs with XML.

It's almost always easier to get a new job, when you still have one.

Plus, being an ex-FAANG is a huge bonus when applying for jobs at "normal" places or starts ups.

YMMV on this one, depending on what you consider "normal" companies (non-tech, non-coastal, non-advertising).

Plenty of those hiring managers have their own opinions about FAANG employees

Some people are being laid off for performance. Most are being laid off because they were unlucky.

Hiring managers don't have time to be super sleuths. If your interview and reference process can't weed people out, then you shouldn't be in charge of hiring people. Either way, the person who gets laid off from Amazon is going to have already shown the capacity to jump through a dozen stupid hoops by sheer process of being offered a job to work there.

"Need to explore other opportunities" is a little weaker but still works.

"This chapter in my life is over" is also popular.

I think I should make a bingo card out of these.

The most common reason for getting laid off is having the misfortune of working in a department or on a project that no longer aligns with the company's "vision" and that's no fault of the engineer.

While some people might be biased to think the laid-off are poor performing employees, these people are simply buying into the "just-world fallacy" -- why would a bad thing happen to a good worker? But the truth is, while a company might ensure a few "rockstars" survive a layoff, there's plenty of "A" and "A-" talent that gets cut without a thought.

We’re all lucky to land that great FAANG job, and just as unlucky to get laid off from it. This year should be a reminder to all of us to never take a day for granted.

Context is important. If 20 out of 120k people get laid off then I might be suspicious of those 20. But if its 20k out of 120k then it's almost certain that whole departments and teams were cut, so it's hard to say anything about the individuals.