I've been working in industry since '97... and I've dodged so many layoffs. That doesn't mean I wasn't impacted, though. There's always at least as much work to be done, and fewer people to do it, and a a lot of people get super stressed out and hard to work with (or work for... this is especially bad with management. Working for someone who is afraid of getting fired is miserable.) Usually, there's a lot <i>more</i> work 'cause the boss expects me to figure out how to make the systems work just as well without spending as much money on them.<p>Several times, I've quit after the layoffs because work became a lot more stressful. At least once, I quit without another job lined up, just 'cause it was too much. (In my defense, I was like 21, I was the only technical person who hadn't been laid off (or left for greener pastures) and my boss, I think, was driven insane by the stress of keeping things going during the brutal dot-com bust. It was not a situation a reasonable person would expect a child to be able to deal with.)<p>In a lot of ways, I think the people in the first round of layoffs have it best; that's when the severance packages are sweetest, and in my experience, after the first round of layoffs, the people who have the best options (which aren't necessarily the best people at doing the job? but there is some correlation) jump ship, and that makes things harder, too, just 'cause you have lost all the people management thinks are the worst, and all the people that management (at other companies) thinks are the best, and you have to then do the job with just those in the middle. (the downside, of course, to being in the first wave is that it's a lot easier to get a new job while you have a job, vs getting that new job right after you got laid off.)<p>My own personal rule is that when the first layoff hits, start looking hard. I mean, if it's an industry-wide downturn and you happen to be at a company that is well-placed to weather it better than most, maybe you stay? but usually the best thing to do after dodging a layoff is to find another job at another company, one that isn't in as much trouble.