What matters more in a layoff?
Who is the first to be let go?
Both during the dotcom and during the housing crisis, performance nor tenure mattered. What mattered was who was liked the most was kept.
And still happens
This is the right answer. Can also be summed up as - office politics.
Tenure sometime matter. Specially for large companies that have generous severance, keeping someone with long tenure maybe cheaper tha. Letting them go.
I hope you pay an accountant.
Why?
Low performing sales reps are the first to go
Selection criteria can vary, but the business case needs to spell out the factors. You can pick job title, department, location, performance rating. Etc. You can’t choose based on protected class data.
Depends on the situation. But being a low performer during layoffs is never a good place to be (unless you’re hoping to be laid off)
A girl can dream...
I would say this time around if we have massive layoffs. I am guessing ppl who are married and make more money will be at more risk. Since ppl need to wfh productively.
Firing based on a protected status (marriage/family status is one) is asking for a lawsuit. Won't happen.
In past jobs it's basically been "I need you to trim X dollars from your departments budget, make it happen" ... Then you line up everyone with their salary numbers and try to keep the critical people while making the numbers work. Sometimes more senior people are cut because they get paid that much more
Each situation is unique. I survived 16 in my years at eBay and the recipe was never the same. However, what JYX said earlier is true. The weight for each of those things will vary.
What actually does matter then if both of them don't matter ?
Whether the business unit is impacted, where the individual ranks in performance review compared to peers in BU/role/level, and how much financial runway has to be found. If the individual can't be moved to another BU then a reasonable approach might be to trim the bottom X% of each job level. Basically every company will behave this way.
EG, what’s happening with furloughs currently. The best retail regional manager is still useless if there are no stores open for them to oversee.