>The first people a company lays off are usually the least performant/useful/valuable

Quite naïve to assume this. Speaking to the most recent round of tech layoffs at my workplace, the higherups said repeatedly it's not based on performance. They didn't elaborate on the methodology at all. We had people who had just been promoted get fired, and we had people who were long-time employees and high performing get fired.

> the higherups said repeatedly it's not based on performance. They didn't elaborate on the methodology at all.

Ours said the same thing. PIPs get axed on every round, but our last one was heavy on employees over the age of 50 ("long-time employees and high performing").

This isn't the sort of thing anyone ever admits what it is, only deny what it isn't.

Come on, you have to really try to create a narrative where having a set of plans which are done with a set of people to do them and then you remove some of those people and it doesnt disrupt those plans.

People don’t like surprises, and they don’t like having plans messed up.

Just because you, personally, might have a role where you (?) aren’t part of plans or don’t do planning doesn’t mean that broadly speaking, you reflect the average of the teams in your company.

It’s far far more likely that if you dont care about your coworkers, you’re an outlier.

While it seems like the most rational approach, it isn't. Companies don't typically include many employees in an improvement program, so when 'low performers' who haven't been covered by such a program are laid off, the remaining employees start to question the fairness of the performance evaluation and the company's commitment to its employees. [1]

The whole industry switched to stack ranking. I wonder what potential long-term effects could emerge.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/layoffs-use-cut-low-bad-perf...