No point in staying on a sinking ship.

It's like with a sinking ship.

In Titanic the folks that got on lifeboats early survived, the ones that didn't got caught up in whatever traps as the rest of the ship goes down. If the ship is going down, its good to not ride it to the depths.

If it's not going down, then maybe it's not worth jumping. That's thr skill in it I guess, knowing which is which.

Can most easily find new jobs.

With new coworkers who are not demoralized by the impending layoff

Layoffs usually occur within the wider context of a more cost constrained/austere environment.

Essentially the high performers understand that they'll be expected to do more with less (people, resources, benefits, ...).

Likely the layoffs won't affect the layers of grifters above them, so it becomes a question of whether they really want to work harder for little or no personal gain, just to support the layers above them who are making and being rewarded for the bad decisions, or whether the high performers should look elsewhere for something more aligned with their personal happiness.

Things change with layoffs - whatever they liked about company before is not there anymore. The relationships get worst, there is a lot more political infighting due to unclear competencies and changes. The people who stay after layoff tend to be demotivated in general too.

often the decisions for the cuts are not made at the manager level, the people who know who the best performers are. The C Suite just says we are cutting these departments often including the managers. Its not done with a scalpel but with an axe and only the very best, known to the c-suite get a stay of execution.

The best talent is often unknown to the csuite.