Never really knowing you and your co-workers are safe. Year after year. Layoffs big and small. Trying to work effectively when you know this time it might just be you or it might be your work group or your project. Phew - I dodged that bullet. That sense of relief - and guilt that makes it hard to focus. Perhaps you were re-organized into a different group. You have lost a few key members of your team - Maybe people lost were not "high achievers" but they were rocks, helping hold the project together, fulfilling critical goals, providing known critical skills and information.
Maybe, just maybe, you get to re-fill a couple positions because now you are seriously understaffed. Now you have new team members without the knowledge of those you lost. You spend a lot of time when you used to be effectively working trying to bring the new people up to speed and integrate them and build another cohesive team. Finally everyone starts to click, starts to once again feel "normal" and become efficient again.
And then the rumors start - there is going to be another layoff. Is it me and my group this time? ...