Which leads to the question: did your job-loss come as a surprise, and if so, why?
It was a big surprise to everyone but me. I base my foresight on watching the idiotic moves of management in the last 4 layoffs.
I provide programming support for many other engineers to enable them to collect data on systems under development. I'm the only person in the group who does what I do (and quite well, I might add), and there will be no replacement. It has started the others to think they are not far behind because without me, lab productivity will plummet since I'm the only one who knows how to program in the language used in the lab (I've got 9 years experience versus, no real experience among the others). Since I started 5 years ago, I've produced a mountain of source code that no one but me has even seen. Throughout all of the past layoffs, everyone always told me they wished they had my job, because it appeared the safest. Now they're all terrified because they know that since I've been let go, that likely means there is not any development work being planned. In fact, there are rumors that all future development work will be outsourced to China and India.