If there are growth opportunities for the company, selectively choosing the top 90% YoY, minimizing backfills (in theory...) will result in a company full of high achievers that can execute on that growth vision.

If the company is shifting into maintenance mode, cutting 40% of the staff is the right move, but definitely hurts shareholders b/c they valued the company as growth, not maintenance.

Sometimes I feel like “shareholder first” mentality has gone a bit too far. Most of the majority shareholders are a handful of people who have too much money, they don’t really put in any work, but are more than happy to put people out of work if it meant they’d get a bit more money.

Because in such adversarial environments, your best employees leave, and quickly. And those people worth way more than half of your workforce.

If you're a healthy company that is growing, you could do 2x as much stuff!

Shareholders didn’t complain when those workers inflated their obscene capitals.

I am just saying that the decision was not some kind of inevitable result of forces beyond their control. They just made a business decision to line their pockets better.