> If you were laid off, chances are you weren't valuable enough. Pure layoffs happen. But from my experience useful employees almost never get let go.

I completely disagree, I’ve been on teams where the best players were let go because organizational changes.

As a matter of fact, I’m currently on a team where one of our best performing, well loved, cross team contributors was let go during Christmas for what I can only classify as politics. It was a company wide RiF and our manager protested, but he was in the target region. I honestly would have put myself or others on the chopping block first, as I don’t contribute half as much and get pad substantially more.