Just my opinion, might be wrong too.
A soft layoff is mostly dependent on your manager and skip manager. When a company is in crunch, they always put lot of work pressure on everyone. To see who survives best. When a resource has width to cover a lot of ground, they always retain them. Like having multi-skill. When you are worth more 1-2 people at your range, you're mostly likely to be retained. I know this is unethical and unprofessional but that's the way company survives. As long as you're humble and ahead of the curve in terms of knowledge from your peers, you're mostly retained. You'll be given unreasonable expectations, but if you want to stick around, you've to deliver.
If that's not how you want to operate, finding a better opportunity is best.
If it's mass layoffs, you just have to pray to not be in that list.
Hope it makes sense.