Mass layoffs are never done in a thoughtful way. It’s often the C-suite telling each division “cut x number of staff underneath you”. That order is filtered down through layers of management until it gets to the people who do actual work. If they’re lucky, they can negotiate some room on their team with one or two layers of management above them, but it just means another team underneath the same management layer is getting hit that much more.
Remember that when a CEO says “we had to make the hard but necessary decision”. All that asshole had to do was say “cut 10,000 people” and filter that order down the stack. All the actual hard decisions were made far, far away from the board of directors.
Mass layoffs are never done in a thoughtful way. It’s often the C-suite telling each division “cut x number of staff underneath you”. That order is filtered down through layers of management until it gets to the people who do actual work. If they’re lucky, they can negotiate some room on their team with one or two layers of management above them, but it just means another team underneath the same management layer is getting hit that much more.
Remember that when a CEO says “we had to make the hard but necessary decision”. All that asshole had to do was say “cut 10,000 people” and filter that order down the stack. All the actual hard decisions were made far, far away from the board of directors.