I have seen old and young, competent and incompetent, loyal and self-serving laid off and fairly uneducated workers kept over very educated workers. No rhyme or reason required because they can do what they want. No one is safe and you will be in for a rude awakening if you get comfortable. It is true, they do use layoffs to weed out older workers -- that's a fact, saw it with my own eyes, everyone knows it and they don't really care or try to hide it. But, I also saw a lot of employees below 40 get the axe regardless of how smart, capable, talented and educated they are. I would say to all of the young, especially the very educated, don't assume you are safe. You may have a job today but how long do you think Dell is going to want to pay you for your education with so many unemployed, experienced, educated workers who can do the same thing and probably better and will be more than happy to undercut your salary to get your job? And, why pay you when they can just go offshore like the first poster said? And, it's a fact Dell loves to replace employees with H1B employees because they work for much less ... so why continue to pay you when they can get someone to do the same job for much less and nobody has to deal with the arrogance, ignorance and sense of entitlement (first post)? Which, btw, based on what I have witnessed, is probably the fastest way to be shown the door. Understand this: Everyone is disposable and replaceable and diversity means nothing, it's just politically correct to talk about and that's how they justify replacing workers with cheaper labor because I saw many diverse men and women unjustly get thrown in the trash for no other reason then they probably weren't kissing the right ***... which is about the only way to guarantee a future there. I think it's the VMware page, there's a post about a guy they recruited from another company, gave him a substantial increase and then laid him off 9 months later because he made too much money... good luck with that. Sounds about right.