@ Anonymous - When I say "full of shit", I mean everyone on here who just throws out hearsay, speculation, and grotesque embellishment. Ninja brought out a good example about the Hawklink antenna, Me brought out a good one knocking down the "Mormon Conspiracy".
Here's where I stand: I agree with the rampant nepotism comment. It has rankled me for years, but this is what happens when a company gets fat and nobody pays attention. I don't agree that it was wrong for the company to wait until the utter moment. Look up how other companies do layoffs. In this crazy world where disgruntled employees trash cubes, send out mass hate emails, and erase entire unix servers when they're laid off, and then go out and sue the company that they just screwed, L-3 did it the only way they could. Frankly, L-3 did those of us who were lucky enough to stay a favor.
I don't believe that all those who were laid off were kicked out because of bad performance. L-3 had to do a cost to benefit ratio of their employees. Take, for example, the commenter who said he made twice what his peers did. This was a quick harvesting of the low hanging fruit - those who made ridiculous amounts of money for the benefit they were providing.
I believe there will be a second round, probably a third. I believe they will be brutal, and many of us who get laid off will wish we were in the first when they were able to give out generous "separation payments".