I work in an industry that has layoffs every few years. I'm contract, and its been great. Each job loss has been a pay increase and me doing even more technical work.

The people who were employees and didn't get laid off, they worked extra hours.

If you are flexible, layoffs are probably good for the economic reorganization. If you aren't flexible, this is probably an incredibly stressful time.

I agree, being in the first round of layoffs is the best option if you play your cards right. You typically get the most generous severance terms, have more opportunities than someone who is the last to be laid off in a bad economy and often get a salary adjustment after your long vacation.

The worst is being the team that shuts the lights off behind them, you can expect high expectations paired with salary cuts and getting dumped into the labor pool at the bottom of the market. If things magically do go well those rewards flow to the investors.

So far I've only been in the 2nd group and it sucks.

Spotify did a moonshot to try to corner the podcast market and is now calling it quits.

The environment has changed, we're not in ZIRP anymore. I just saw a LinkedIn post celebrating that their company went from 11 to 100 UI/UX designers in 6 years (at a bank of all places). I'm pretty sure what's about to happen to them, but it's indicative of the whole industry. Companies have over hired in pretty much every department because there was money and there was nobody there difficult hard questions.