Directors are middle managers. VP and above are upper management. They don't get laid off just like that, unless the entire org chart below the VP is being dissolved.
Anecdotes, but... A former BigTechCo employer (I quit early 2022) had (~10% of staff) layoffs the other week. At least 3 different engineering VPs and 1 SVP were let go that I know of, including my former manager. None of the orgs or teams under them were dissolved. The team I left behind remained completely intact otherwise, though they obviously have a new reporting structure.
Lots of other Director-level and below were let go, as well. Impacts to IC-level employees was minimal in the engineering organization but common in other departments, e.g. product and marketing.
I saw some VPs and Directors let go as well. Frankly, the org chart still makes sense without them being present (all of their previous reports simply report now to who their manager used to be). Consider how deep the org chart has grown in a company like Google, and how it's probably not really necessary to have such depth. It's easy to rejigger the org chart by increasing the branch factor and decreasing the depth -- communication will be more efficient this way, and you cut costs as you have fewer total nodes to achieve the same number of actual people doing the work (vs people managing the people doing the work).
At least these higher-ups are gonna be OK, as they were making obscene amounts of money ($1M+/yr) and have all been in the industry for awhile, thus are well-situated financially. Every single one of them I know owns at least one home and routinely does all sorts of expensive traveling. Contrast that with laying off someone earlier in their career for whom a layoff might actually impose real financial hardships.
I sympathize with them to some degree. I'd like to think that when I'm their age, I'll be able to walk out of the front door on my own terms.
That said, as you correctly point out, obscene is the word of the day. I worked with these people for nearly 10 years, I know entirely too much about their personal histories and lives. They're each multi-millionaires, they're each fully capable of retirement today... Or, hell, many years ago, for that matter. They're going to be just fine once their bruised egos heal.
> They're each multi-millionaires, they're each fully capable of retirement today... Or, hell, many years ago, for that matter.
That's the funny thing. I was talking to one of them who I know for a fact is very well off, and he was saying he kind of wished that he had been laid off, as it would've been a huge payout (because of tenure) that would've allowed him to not need to find another job for almost a full year, which he'd do at a leisurely pace.
In my mind I'm thinking, you'd still want to work?! Dude, you're loaded, you're over 50, why not just retire if that happened?? But maybe he wouldn't know what to do with himself. I'm not nearly at conventional retirement age yet, but despite having enough money to be financially independent already, I'm not considering retirement, as I too wouldn't know what to do with myself.
In a union (and possibly in a sane non-union) environment, in that situation you get demoted and can bump someone below you, who can then bump someone below them, until the lowest rank gets eliminated (or a vacant position just becomes un-vacant).
Makes sense when managers are hired from within and retain the ability to do the job of the people they were managing. And 10000000% makes sense from a peter principle point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
Definitely does not work when managers are parachuted in from elsewhere or in a fungible "a manager is a manager and can manage any team". That happens in government a lot.
