This remains my chief concern - part of this admittedly is anger that those responsible for the sackings have generally not been sacked, but the rest of it is whether or not anyone in charge truly knows what they did wrong in order to avoid the same situation again.
When one authorizes a 40,000-person increase in headcount, what did they think they were paying for? What projects were these people allocated to, and why are these projects now expendable where they weren't before?
My suspicion is that a lot of the hiring for the past two years were for work and projects that simply wouldn't pass even a cursory smell-test. I also strongly suspect that there really should be some replacements in leadership positions - not because of some sense of retribution for the layoffs but because I honestly don't think many people have internalized what went wrong in a way that would make them more reliable in the future.
Many of these layoffs seem like slash-and-burn tactics in response to criticism and investor panic rather than a real, sober assessment of the excesses of the past few years and why they happened.
Your last sentence is actually why I might -- might -- be a bit more forgiving here -- in some cases (most?) the layoffs are being driven by pressure from activist investors. I have firsthand knowledge that at least one of the major companies that did a layoff recently had no internal desire or financial need to do it, but is being heavily pressured to lay off staff as a cost-cutting measure, even though the business is perfectly viable without it.
A lot of the world's ills today seem to be boiling down to sociopathic trust fund billionaires treating literally everything in life as a game to be won.
When one authorizes a 40,000-person increase in headcount, what did they think they were paying for? What projects were these people allocated to, and why are these projects now expendable where they weren't before?
My suspicion is that a lot of the hiring for the past two years were for work and projects that simply wouldn't pass even a cursory smell-test. I also strongly suspect that there really should be some replacements in leadership positions - not because of some sense of retribution for the layoffs but because I honestly don't think many people have internalized what went wrong in a way that would make them more reliable in the future.
Many of these layoffs seem like slash-and-burn tactics in response to criticism and investor panic rather than a real, sober assessment of the excesses of the past few years and why they happened.