the.com/employee layoffs
the corporate art of calling mass firings a strategic realignment.
means the termination of workers not for poor performance but because the company decided it needs fewer of them.
from from lay off, originally 19th-century factory shorthand for temporarily benching workers between production cycles; the temporary part quietly vanished sometime in the 20th century.
stock bumpshare prices often rise the day layoffs are announced
survivor guiltremaining employees report lower productivity, not higher
euphemism inflationrightsizing, restructuring, and synergy all mean the same thing
rehiring patternmany firms quietly rehire for the same roles within a year
for instance
meta 2022 — cut 11,000 jobs, 13 percent of staff, in one november morning
amazon 2022-23 — trimmed over 27,000 corporate roles across two waves
twitter 2022 — musk slashed roughly 80 percent of staff within months of buying it
google 2023 — axed 12,000 jobs weeks after posting record annual profit