I was laid off from Mythic Entertainment (an EA Studio) Wed, along with a bunch of other people (the rumor says 60-130... to be honest, I don't know how many. They kept us seperated into small groups and issued appointments to come back another day to collect our personal belongings).

I don't know why I was chosen. I can't explain it. I worked very hard, did a lot of great work, had a great review, and I was in a tug of war between 2 team leads who wanted me for my talent and skills. Heck, they had 5 or 6 people working on the Guild Window when I used to (before I was reassigned) do the whole thing myself! Why they picked me to be laid off and not some of the other people I really don't know. One would think that a company would keep the better people and lose the not so great people, but that didn't seem to be the case here. A lot of great people were let go. The leads didn't even know who was being laid off. Wouldn't you consult your team leads as to the performance of their employees so that you could wisely chose who stayed and who got the boot? Wouldn't it be better to layoff the one, probably younger, dude with no ties, no family, and had a better chance to move on than the person with family, a house, and had determined to plant his roots there? (Of course not.. that would be prejudice, and illegal) Wouldn't it be better to lay off the people who spent 3 or 4 months working on a single feature that ended up late and bug ridden? Wouldn't it be better to layoff the people who didn't contribute as much to the game or got a poor review? Wouldn't it be better to layoff the people who didn't earn a bonus as a result of their hard work and dedication? Wouldn't it be better to layoff the people who didn't impress the top brass, including EA execs, with a feature so revolutionary that they asked it to be removed for the E3 demo so its competitors wouldn't copy it? Wouldn't it be better to layoff the people who didn't actually do much actual work on the game itself and instead were simply PR fluff? Wouldn't it be better to layoff the people that were responsible for the major systems that caused the game to be redesigned over and over and over and over again (and that many users still complain about)? Wouldn't it be better to layoff yourself for the poor mis-management that contributed towards the lackluster subscriptions to begin with?

I understand financial woes. Believe me. A reduction in force isn't good. I understand that hard sacrifices need to be made. But it confuses me when such sacrifices are seemingly random dice rolls and I was laid off for no other apparent reason than because some upper exec who didn't even know about my importance to the team failed my saving throw.