It's probably more like a popular lie told by engineers. Yes, layoffs have been in a mixture of roles as far as I can tell. But there's definitely this wishful thinking in some circles that it's just administrative and marketing people.
It could be. I was at a company that fired 1/4 of its employees, many of whom were engineers, and nobody has said a peep about it. As far as I know, there hasn't even been an internal broadcast E-mail explaining why a bunch of people just disappeared.
On the one hand, I find that disrespectful on the part of management. On the other, it allows job-seekers to remain quiet about what happened. If I'm not asked directly if I'm still there, I don't talk about it.
The attention that some tech layoffs are getting is often not the norm. It commonly just happens, no announcement is made, and employees know a bunch of people are gone but not much beyond that—aside from some individuals they know aren’t there any longer.
