A few years back, a layoff felt like a freak event — the kind of thing you read about, not something that happened to you. That's over. Since mid-2022 it hasn't stopped. Q1 2026 brought the biggest spike since the peak in Q1 2023. My LinkedIn feed is a graveyard of corporate loyalty right now. People who gave a company 5, 10, 15 years, writing these aching "end of a chapter" posts. You can feel the betrayal in them. The grief, even. And here's the part nobody wants to hear: we did this to ourselves. We identify with our employers way too much. We swallow the "culture," the "mission," the "we're a family" line — and then we're stunned when the math changes and the math wins. The Illusion vs. The Spreadsheet Everything about corporate life is built to make you feel indispensable. Look at what's on offer: "We're a family." Families don't usually lay you off to clean up a quarterly margin. Learning budgets, free lunches, the snack wall. Retention tools. Not gifts.…