I don't think this post really views this from the perspective of the company. Why do companies do layoffs? Well, many reasons, but in general they feel a need to spend less money but intend to get better results. To some extent that means laying off people who are poor at their jobs and keeping people who are good at their jobs. This is almost impossible, because the good people are the most willing to leave, and the bad people are most motivated to politic. So the company is going to lay people off and realistically, it's not going to be about who is good or bad. There is some sense though, cuts are not going to hit core parts of the business first.
One of the curiosities of this is that the rockstar engineers often want to go and build something incredible and new. But those are the exact types of places where management will turn around and say "Yo! Why do we have 50 extremely expensive engineers working on this weird project bringing in no money". So you can go where the interesting work is, but often that's the most precarious position. Do you think the mediocre engineer working on Facebook's timeline is more or less at risk than the Rockstar building a new UI for Meta's next headset? I know who shareholders would want to keep.
One of the curiosities of this is that the rockstar engineers often want to go and build something incredible and new. But those are the exact types of places where management will turn around and say "Yo! Why do we have 50 extremely expensive engineers working on this weird project bringing in no money". So you can go where the interesting work is, but often that's the most precarious position. Do you think the mediocre engineer working on Facebook's timeline is more or less at risk than the Rockstar building a new UI for Meta's next headset? I know who shareholders would want to keep.