~50 layoffs and ~25% federal grant budget cut

Only one guy was laid off in Analysis Pipeline (my group of ~20 programmers). I'm sad he's gone - a smart guy with many similar interests. My group however is in pretty stable condition and intends to keep producing and improving genome sequencing software for the world. Soon maybe genome sequencing will be standard procedure for every new-born. Currently I'm focused on the error reporting part of the software so it isn't quite as difficult to debug problems.

Our grant was still on the order of 10s of millions for 4 full years so after the chaos today no one is really worried. My training/probationary period ends on Christmas Eve at which point I'm allowed to take vacation and have more job stability. The one guy who was laid off was still in that probationary period. I hope the system seems much less confusing to me by Christmas.