This has happened to me twice in my career and both times its like you're talking to a whole different person.
In my cynical opinion, being that different person is the number 1 trait companies look for when selecting managers
In summary: Patty McCord helped create the company culture in Netflix not ever holding on to people, if your position becomes slightly redundant or your performance falters for a bit, you're out. She apparently called herself "the queen of the good goodbyes". She says that she does not like the word "fired", that people are just "moving on" and that this is good for everyone involved. At one point in the interview, she remembers gleefully recounts admonishing an employee she let go for crying about about it.
The twist being that she herself was eventually fired as well. The interview does not go very deep into this because "she doesn't like to talk about it", and just says that leaving Netflix was "terrible, painful and sad".
I mean, is this impostor syndrome or is it something else?
But still your point about the absurd uncertainty of big company roles, even under glowing performance gauntlets as you so aptly say is well taken.
you highlight a paradox between the values the company espouses, and the ones they actually keep. In where it appears that, no loyalty is returned to the employee from the company in which the employee invested their loyalty so heavily.
Indeed, folks may quibble with this characterization, or even strongly disagree, but when cuts are made like this, even when valuable people could afford to be kept, that’s what it really comes down to.
Poor Google. The pain! What have they done to deserve this, oh heavens?