How did you survive?
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How do you survive layoffs?? Have money in the bank you fools! You are supposed to put money in the bank when boom times are booming. Todays current generation is in a bind, college loans for hyperinflated tuition prices. Borrowed money already blown on yuppified habits, latte, hair weaves, nail salons, and all the other mindless bullshit that 25-30 year olds buy. If you are 30 and are not driving a paid off car, (or have paid off vehicles in your personal fleet) you are a registered shithead. Start there.
I've ben with SLB since January 2000. It has been a great job so far but yes, 2009 was really tough. We lost about 1/3 of our workforce where I am in 3 separate layoffs. The first cuts did not hurt much as most of those people were very expendable. Second cuts were harder as better people did not survive. The 3rd cut saw extremely talented people let go. It's always tough to see good people who you develop friendships with get pushed out. Hopefully, the market is close to bottoming out and not too many good people have to lose jobs.
I hope it'll not be as bad as 2009. My group had 14 folks, 8 were let go, sheesh. I still cannot figure out why they kept me, I was paid less, that might be the reason.
It was incredibly ugly. Keep your head down, do what you are told, look for opportunities to make or save money for the company.
Good luck.
I did some googling today and from what I read, in 2009 SLB had two big waves of layoffs of around 5,000 each. At the time, SLB "only" employed about 84,000. So the layoffs were much bigger then.