Voluntary redundancy

If you founded OpenAI, maybe

Otherwise just take the pay package

So if I’m understanding this correctly, you can either get a layoff letter with a pay package, which also positions you better for your next job search 

Or you could keep trying to work it out in your current group and hope to impress your team with your ability and work ethic, but you could be let go and get no severance.. 

By when do you have to decide?

How long have you been working for? Do you at least have a year of experience? 

Start looking. It's a less brutal way of saying you will be laid off shortly. Look at it as you get a 2-3 months more on payroll, after which you'll probably get severance of 2-3 months. 4-6 months to find something. Best of luck mate.

This is a nice way of saying you're getting laid off. It's up to you if you want to take the package - do the math on is this payout higher than if I stuck around for 2-3 more months and then got ~2 months severance

I think you should take the package on the table now. It's highly unlikely you (or anyone) come back from this unless there are mass resignations in the team. No one would be particularly concerned about the redundancy in this market and you buy yourself some time to explore next steps.

Thanks everyone, appreciate the advice and had been leaning towards taking it myself - it's a bit of a head fuck as well because I've been told repeatedly it's "not due to performance" and I got early promotion last year bc I'd performed well. Also doesn't seem to account for the team's pipeline, of which I've played a not insignificant part in developing...

In the scenario where you have a lot of work to do, you're essentially just doing free work because you're not going to get paid more for these efforts. In a scenario where you have no work, it's even less productive from a job search perspective to stick around in the office and pretend to be working when likely others know you aren't doing anything. Instead of staring at your screen all day staring at ppts why not just go home and start applying to places?

If you stay in your role, then why not work harder in the areas you were told you weren't as good at to show you are capable and intelligent?

This way if people see that you are improving in performance, then you could move up a bucket in ranking in people's minds?