Not everyone manages to negotiate the same high tech salaries even if it looks like they're working for a prestigious company It may take a very long to find new work. People have mortgages that they may struggle to afford long term - or at all if they can't find a job with the same salary, meaning they could have to sell their homes. Some people have debts for whatever reason out of their control. Some people have many family members depending on them. Not everyone's got a simple life.

My wife was part of this layoff, worked in their HR org and we just bought a house beginning of the year borrowing heavily from our 401(k)s. So we immediately now have to payoff this huge loan back to her 401(k) which we were paying per paycheck. 90%+ of her team were let go, so she's competing with all of them for the few roles available in other companies. Most of those 1900 people were not developers, so the next few months will have a lot of uncertainty for us. "Not everyone's got a simple life."

that's true. Not everyone.

Even people who are employed can go broke, declare bankruptcy, and not being able to pay for their previously-enjoyed lifestyle anymore.

The financial security ladder has many steps.

Hard to imagine that programmers, product managers, SREs that had successfully passed AirBnB interviews would be so close to the bottom of that ladder, that their children will go hungry within months of stopping to receive the severance.

Something that scares me is that tech interviews are so fickle. You could pass the Google interview one day but be rejected by everywhere else the next.

Yeah, passed Apple interview but didn't pass FB one :)