One would think that someone prominent like Ian Lance Taylor or Russ Cox (who also left within this past year, as noted by another commenter) would be relatively insulated from that.
Maybe they are safe from being laid off, though you never can tell [1]. But it does not mean they enjoy the tension, the demands, the disagreements, etc that likely crop up. At their position, they can afford to not put up with that, not hold onto the enviable salary, like many others doubtlessly and begrudgingly do.
Some time ago the "right thing" was social, when Google tried to pivot to a social media company with Circles or whatever; that didn't work out, but I don't recall people got laid off at the time for not working on that at the time.
Why would you think that? You still have management, you have to go through perf calibration and justify your performance. Engineering like most human profesional activities is a very social endeavor where you rely on the people that surround you and you always have people pressuring you to do something.
Insulated by whom? Most of the old time sr Eng mgmt is either gone (replaced by oracle people, or people like them) or have shifted to that mode of operation.
Or management is cynically thinking they could get more bang for their buck with multiple people (I gotta imagine at 19 years at google gets you a healthy multiple compared to new hires)
