The criteria for every RIF is usually different. It starts out with getting a list using some generic criteria. They do this for legal reasons, so they can legally justify that the RIF applied to a group of people and someone was not being singled out or discriminated against. Examples of lists in the past, anyone who worked remote (pre-Covid), anyone who got less than a 3 on their review, any manager with less than 5 reports, or any director that is lower than 5 levels deep. As a manager, you need to be cautious about how you answer any surveys about your employees. For example, once they asked about employee roles and if a QA was a manual tester or automated tester. A couple months later all the manual testers were on the list.
Once the generic list is created, it is shared with managers to a certain level. Sometimes the immediate manager is informed of who is is on the list but sometimes they are not. The managers who get to see the list than have to fight to get someone off and that fight isn't easy. If they do manage to win, they often then need to supply a different name.
All in all, there is usually a financial target they are trying to hit and that can impact how the list is created as well. Products they want to disinvest in will have more people on the list than products that they think will be the next big thing.
I found this informative. OP: @aw+1kakcej6y