It has been 1.5 years since I was laid off for 6 months

To the last point, there are few ways to lose respect faster than spinning your wheels with all kinds of tasks. Without consciously recognizing it, upper management is looking for people who understand and live the Pareto principle.

> I liked writing personal software outside of work because at work it could do my job for me or it frees me from the restrictions of shitty commercial software. You have to be careful on this one. Often (it varies by jurisdiction), blanket rules by companies that all software you write in your spare time are their property can be safely ignored as invalid. But if it is heavily related to your current job then (again depends on jurisdiction) then they probably do own the copyright, possibly even if they don't have an explicit contractual provision for it. If you're using your own spare-time software at work and benefiting from it there, it would be hard to argue it's not related.

> It’s not you that’s critical, it’s the job you fill that’s critical. I think at a big enough company the people making layoff decisions don't know or care what job is critical. In some cases that means your job wasn't as critical as you thought. But I've also seen layoffs that seem just downright stupid. Literally saw someone laid off then re-hired to a different team a couple weeks later with a substantial bump to their pay. At a certain level of abstraction nothing will save you. Critical job? Bean counters don't know the specifics of each team or project. High level? Cost too much, not contributing enough to short term goals. I was once told that a lot of executive level management was based off gut instinct more than cold logical decision making. It would not surprise me if this also applied to deciding who is laid off.