My (small) company got acquired by a massive West coast tech giant and six months later all the employees (but not the executives and managers) of the original small company were laid off. This was not even remotely surprising to me, and would not have been even if any of us had been given any work to do during that six months. When my boss told me I was being laid off, I laughed and said “of course I am” which surprised him as apparently everybody else was massively shocked and upset. Which surprised me as I don’t see how anybody could have possibly not seen it coming.

All things considered, this company was actually slightly decent about it, as they gave us two months’ notice and severance equal to about what we would have been able to get from unemployment. The severance disqualified us from unemployment, but at least we got the amount up front and we didn’t have to spend six months pretending to look for work.