Because economy!
So during the recession I worked at a place that went through 4 rounds of layoffs. Each of those layoffs had a different tone.
I'm going though this now just to give you some perspective regarding top performer and stuff like that. People who have been paying attention aren't going to assume anything about you. Don't let it tank your confidence. People who haven't been paying attention aren't worthy of your concern about what they think.
So the first round was right around the time my company figured out something was going wrong. That was late December 2008. Around 10% of our clients had gone out of business. That's 10% of our invoices weren't going to get paid. The company told each office how much to cut. The manager of the office had to identify how to do that. Our manager did it by figuring out the fewest employees to cut and hit that number.
Performance was not taken into it. Sick days, vacation balances, client satisfaction, sales, nothing was factored in. The most expensive engineer got cut, and a secretary. Their two costs combined was slightly over the number he needed.
The randomness of this has stayed with me ever since.
The second round came a few months later, and the managers had a lot more time to make the decision. They had basically known it was coming since right after the previous round. In the second round, every employee they'd had a reason to fire in the past 5 years but hadn't because there was too much work, they let go. So if you had lost your temper and cost us a client, but managed to just barely hold on to your job, well, now you were out. HR went through the personnel files and if yours wasn't flawless, you were out.
I kind of don't have a problem with this. It seems a little wrong, it seems like there ought to be forgiveness, recent history trumps ancient mistakes, but if someone has to go this seems OK. It's sort of like when a 55 year old goes to jail for something they did when they were 18, is there really any justice for anyone? They'd clearly started over and been contributing since...
The third round missed our office entirely. This round was entirely voluntary. Nobody was strictly speaking, laid off, but the salary and compensation packages were reduced so severely that a solid 20% of the company resigned. Basically, the best or proudest people left. I was young and drank the company kool-aid to stay and fight on and help out by taking a smaller salary, but I regret it.
The fourth round was the deepest cut. This was the first to be done properly. A fair and honest evaluation of each person's contribution. How many dollars are you earning the company, or allowing others at the company to earn? The spare executives got cut, the extra project secretaries. The IT guy who was someone's son. The engineer who refused to learn the new software. I still believe if they'd done this cut first, the others wouldn't have been necessary.
By the end of it, the best people at the company were gone. The worst people at the company were gone. A lot of people in the middle were gone. It was random. In 5 years I had 6 bosses. 40% of our clients no longer exist. The ones that are still there exist because they're good at not spending too much money on services like ours. Out of the original office of 15 people, when I finally left there were only 3 others still there from when I started.
All told, it was four years of random bullshit. When someone tells me now that they were laid off, I make no judgement as to why. Neither should anyone else.
If a company hits a rough spot and has to reduce staff, it simply doesn't follow that the staff they eliminate are useless, or tainted, or whatever. Every company I ever worked for was pretty ruthless about cutting useless people on a regular basis. The reason layoffs are bad is that the company is often forced to cut perfectly fine employees.
It's true that the best time to find a job is when you already have one, but never be ashamed about your story.
"Why were you let go?"
"My company wasn't managed properly, and had hired more employees than they could sustain. I didn't take it personally, most of the new hires at my level were also let go. They were kind enough to let us use the computers in our last few weeks to send out resumes and so forth."
"I'd work there again, if they were hiring in an office closer to my new place, no hard feelings."
*shrug* "Nothing to do with me, as soon as they let me go it stopped being my problem, on to the next challenge."