I know, I know...
my parachute wasn't golden but it was enough to carry me through (3 months pay up front) until I got my next job. Since I started interviewing before the lay offs - I new odds were against me - and got a new job about 1.5 months later, I ended up fattening my bank account a little instead of taking a loss.
As for the execs at Yahoo that left, I don't think their parachutes mattered much to them anyway as most of them got rich from their stock options long before. Most of those guys had salaries in the $100-300k range but cashed out tens or hundredes of millions in options from '98-'00. When you're that rich, I think the power and prestige of being a CEO or co. president is more of a lure than the base salary.
I think both Norm and I are right. It's just our perspectives are different. Norm worked for a horrible company, a sweat shop. Yahoo did their best to make the situation tolerable. Everyone got severence pay and a continuation of medical insurance. They paid for one-on-one job counselling with Spherion (it really helped too!). There were no guards to escort people out; I had time to go say 'goodbye' to friends that remained, get my last free mocha, and steal some office supplies. My manager called some of his friends at other companies to setup interviews. The vp of my division came by to apologize for not being able to keep me on (Incidentally, my vp's boss was let go too). And so on.
